At a time of technological changes, the contemporary adolescent fashions new modes of intersubjective organization (sms, chat, mail, networks, etc.) by producing multiple figures of his new reference points. The author invites the reader to follow the chaotic movement of this evolution, piecemeal, as suggested by this fragmentary mode that runs counter to the abecedary.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 235-238.
Using a sociolinguistic study with youths from Montreuil and the Urals, who go to the rap studios of Île-de-France and Chelyabinsk (Russia), the author shows that their language practices are action practices. These are linked to a need to denounce and express words and wrongs they have experienced.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 227-234.
E. Silberstein is the friend from adolescence who left a mark on Freud’s life, from the time Freud was thirteen years old. Their rich correspondence between 1871 and 1881, essentially based on Freud’s letters, conjures up a portrait of the young Freud. Contrary to the “official” idea of a non-problematic adolescence, we would argue that this relation was marked by intense sexual conflicts and by a passionate friendship which ended, like so many other male friendships prior to this, in a break up.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 219-226.
In this paper I highlight the particular challenges faced by adolescents in their efforts to accomplish object removal. This is a protracted, conflict-laden process even in relatively healthy individuals that leads to an intolerable internal state triggered by the feeling of object loss. Loneliness in adolescence results, not from the withdrawal of love by the object but from a developmentally compelled process within the adolescent to gradually remove and transfer libidinal cathexes from primary objects to new adult relationships. Associated with this process is the deep feeling of “emptiness” felt by many teenagers during this phase. The defenses employed to fill up this emptiness are manic in character and may include the compulsive acquisition of substitute objects (e.g. music downloaded from the Internet, video games, food, clothes, shoes, etc.) and the excessive use of alcohol, drugs, and cigarette smoking. All of these defenses suggest an orally based, regressive, primary process attempt (often cyclical in a “taking-in” and “expelling” fashion) to transform depression and loneliness into elation and to find respite in pursuits based on the pleasure principle. I will further add that, while the reasons are complex, such loneliness is among the myriad factors that contribute to promiscuous sexual activity, eating disorders, and symptoms of cutting or self-hurting.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 195-216.
The “cerebral” illumination of adolescence allows us to show that there is at this age a complex process of interaction between environment and cerebral organization capable of remodeling the latter in accordance with new restraints, both extrinsic and intrinsic. Social, psychological and biological interact, with the brain being marked with both the changes of the outer world and the psychological restraints of the adolescent process itself. Adolescence would thus illustrate, almost like a caricature, a continuous adaptive mechanism that can help us to conceive of other major periods of change in life.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 185-190.
Can neuroscience lead to a new metapsychology of adolescence? N. Georgieff’s paper leads us to question the concepts of complementarity and integration, especially complementarity developed by G. Devereux. It borrowed from some currently essential domains questions about the nature of theory raised by the development of relativist and quantum physics.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 181-184.
Using ethnographic research in two socially-oriented children’s centers (MECS), this paper investigates how rite and ritualization can help fill in for the family. We look at the conditions that foster the appearance and use of rites and observe how these can serve as tools to promote social inclusion and participation, in combination with moral and educational culture. We hypothesize that “wild” psychologization of problems by professionals and the nearly exclusive recourse to clinical psychologists to regulate difficulties in such institutions leads to an under-valuation of the interest and effectiveness of rituals, in favor of the “talking cure” alone.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 169-179.
This paper focuses on a study conducted in Education science as part of psychoanalytically-oriented clinical work about teacher training. This training is viewed from the perspective of professional identity crisis necessitating a <i>passage</i> towards “becoming a teacher”; by opening our study to anthropology, we are able to view this as a rite of passage. We will try to imagine the links between the bodily mark of the ritual and “self-inscription” in a work of clinical writing.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 161-167
The analysis of a portion of a non-directive interview with a young adolescent leads the author to consider the institutional setting as an instance of reflectivity, whose function of limiting desire is not control over the subject but rather a way of helping him to escape from the psychic determinations which alienate him.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 153-160.
The observation of human suffering often takes place from distance achieved by disavowing emotional states which, nevertheless, often seem decisive for the observer. This paper will attempt to investigate this hypothesis using the example of a research-intervention mission in an institution for adolescents living through familial break-up. Deeply troubled by the strangely disaffected voice of an adolescent girl, the observer is obliged to drop the distanced attitude of the expert. What bothers him is not the history of this young girl, but what it recalls of his own family experience, which gets mixed up with scientific observation. The return to this “unconscious of the observation” forms the basis of what we could call an initiation.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 145-152.