Defining “helping to grow up” as a way of supporting the capacity for investment, this paper works at the crossroads of anthropology and psychoanalysis to show how traditional rites of passage to adulthood can support the formation of the “I” and how spaces for elaboration become necessary to ensure this function when the external world has trouble providing symbolic certainty.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 135-144.
This paper explores the place of the experiences of adolescence through an historical and political reflection on the sense of community. Youths were always on the front lines of civilizations movements of insurrection and emancipation, although the disasters of the 20th century have left their mark on human achievements and have profoundly disturbed relations between plan and action and confidence in the future. The violence of the act is within us, even in the external forms we use to protect ourselves from it. Imagining how to approach adolescence and fit its manifestations into the more vast rhythms of the generations would require us to acknowledge the damage and the contradiction at the heart of our community and to take care, at every moment of human life, of the ongoing metamorphosis in which we are involved.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 119-129.
The very French reticence at questioning alcohol use by adolescents on one hand, and a possible alcoholism of the adolescent on the other hand, compels one to a reflection on the reality of the concept of addictive economy, which should not be confused with that of dependence on a substance. In such conditions, not only is adolescent alcoholism not a fantasy condition, but it seems interesting for us to question these two expressions of alcohol consumption as an attempts at escaping the hold of a very fusional relation, which only gives rise to the conquest of a pseudo-empowerment.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 107-118.
The psychic suffering of adolescent girls at school often takes the form of verbal aggression, for the most part trivialized by young people while decried by professionals. Using a study carried out with school principals, this paper explores the defensive function of this trivialization as a way of putting the force of drives at a distance, of expressing narcissistic preoccupations, and of dealing psychically with the intrusion of puberty and the question of identity. Mediation workshops are presented as an opportunity to treat these issues in a different way, a way that is more open to oneself and to others.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 95-106.
The adolescent tries to construct a language attesting to his revolt. However, the demands of the code inherent in all speech compel him to the organization of sophisticated rules, and it would be a mistake to see this as ruining classical language. This paper looks at norms that are called into question by creative processes born from revolt and excess.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 87-94.
This paper concerns clinical work with sexual aggression experienced in adolescence, in the fright and bewilderment after the violation. We first revisit the issue of the revival specific to post-traumatic repetition of trauma, hypothesizing the existence of a traumatic latency period when the prevailing traumatic process would suspend the subject’s work of readjustment, bonding, and symbolization. Can such aggressions and their fixed yet active psychic aftermath, characterized by the return of the identical, be joined with registers of fantasy proper to adolescence and to the transformation of the body in puberty? Or are we dealing with two internal foreign bodies, opening on their own and attacking the subject when the latter is caught between a rock and a hard place?
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 77-86.
The psychopathological context of anorexia nervosa in the adolescent brings to the forefront the consideration of the body both in its effective reality and its representations. Some body image disorders can thus be described and conceived of as different forms of symptomatic solutions through which the anorexic adolescent can try to shore up poorly established and sometimes quite fragile narcissistic foundations. The therapy must therefore take this dimension into account in order to resolve such problems. Psychoanalytical psychodrama, applied to a cohort of patients afflicted with these disorders will serve here as a methodological support, highlighting the elements of this problematic. This paper will also discuss the therapeutic effects of using this technique from various angles (analysis of corporal components of the counter-transference, dynamic of touch, use of the double and of corporal figurations).
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 65-76.
This paper offers us an opportunity to present and explore a treatment based on corporal mediation for adolescents hospitalized in a child psychiatric ward. We will show how the proposal to use fabrics and mime as a space for mobilizing the body, can be a support for subjectivation and psychic transformation, especially at this period of life.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 49-63.
Freud approaches the beating fantasy “a child is being beaten” as part of the psychic dynamic of every individual. It appears at the end of the infantile period and derives from the psychic modifications which take place in three phases. This fantasy is rewritten in adolescence. Striking the parent is considered to be the enacting of every adolescent’s fantasy: “I am beating my parent.” It is understood that the phases occur in a condensed way, all at the same time, carried along by the outbreak of puberty. Each phase marks a different elaboration of the separation from Oedipal figures. The reemergence of this fantasy in adolescence overwhelms the thought system, allowing strong oedipal desires to coexist while punishing another person for not stopping these fantasies.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 37-47.
Using the individual psychotherapeutic treatment of a thirteen year-old patient, Clementine<i></i>, we will explore the possible repercussions of a sisterly bond that is too strong, and how it may sometimes prove a hindrance to the separation/individuation process. Carried to an extreme in the fantasy of twinship, it leads to an Ego with vague contours, and the pursuit of a relation that may be harmful to a subject with fragile narcissism. There is lack of differentiation between bodies and psyches. Anorexia will burst this specular bubble when only one of the subjects reaches physiological puberty. Clinical interviews in the space for physical and psychic separation the hospital setting provides shed light on the issues and the limits of the establishment of subjectivation work.
Adolescence, T. 31 n°1, pp. 27-36.