Can clinical psychoanalysis be useful in helping adolescent war victims ? What remains of the specificity of adolescence after serious trauma ? The author attempts to answer these questions by means of three clinical examples of adolescents whose psychical functioning was seriously compromised by traumatic experiences during the war in Bosnia.
Archives de catégorie : ENG – En guerre – 2001 T.19 n°2
Dominique Agostini : mars’ war and the petrified ego
This article, focusing on the issue of the adolescens process held prisoner by the bellicose mentality secreted by/secreting war, argues that the reversal of values inherent to this mentality imply deep splits between parts, especially adult and infantile, and masculine and feminine. Splitting which, as the cases of Marcel and Roch illustrate, sacrifice the the young warrior’s adolescens process upon the phallic altar.
The author pinpoints the weapon, the enemy, and the uniform as signs and basic ingredients both of Mars’ craft and of the bellicose mentality. He envisions the work of separating from the bellicose mentality in relation to the passage from weapon to tool : a passage which opens onto the values of strength, creativity and beauty that war has replaced with horror and violence – a reversal of values. For Roch and Marcel, the re-establishment of these values, corresponding to the transformation of terrors into narratives, dreams and fantasies, occurs through their experimentation of an adolescence that has been petrified until now.
Serge Lesourd, Eric Bidaud : a child warlord : the “ real-ization ” of the murder of the father
From their work with an adolescent caught up in the violence of inter-ethnic strife, who became a warrior at the age of ten after his family was murdered by the other clan, the authors examine the enactment in reality of the murder of the father and its effects on the subject’s place within the social bond, leading in to the issues raised by the violence of today’s youths as a “ real-ization ” of the murder of the father.
Assumpta Naniwe : growing up in horror ?
A sense of honor is necessary for growing up. With regard to several clinical examples the author shows what is happening to the contrary during the humiliations of the war in Burundi. What mechanisms are at work? What are the uses of the group?
Jean-Claude Métraux : from the victim to the actor
This paper presents an intent of synthesis of the symposium and outlines its main results : interpretation of clinical data and critical discussion of post-traumatic disorders ; child soldiers’ psychology; added problem of exile ; reflexions on societal and social memories ; usual trend to the grief dimension; dynamics between individual and community, psychis and society. Il will be proponed to reverse the usual perspective, which implies a simultaneous partial redefinition of psychotherapist’s role, engaged citizen and social actor on the first lines of History.
François Lebigot : young french soldiers put to the test in sarajevo
The French army’s new assignments (peacekeeping, interposition) though particularly trying psychologically, have shown in both the youngest and the more seasoned soldiers an astonishing capacity for dominating their own violence. The situations they have had to face in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, described here, bring together all the conditions liable to drive these subjects into uncontrollable drive overflow.
From this one could conclude that youths who join the army, often as they are emerging from a difficult adolescence, are looking for discipline, order, an ideal that would enable them to have peaceful relations with others. Because of the place and the time in question, they have often paid dearly for their learning, and missed the hoped-for reconciliation with humanity.
Yassaman Montazami-Ramade : adolescent blood nuptials : soldiers and martyrs in iran
Following the collapse of revolutionary utopias, Iranian adolescents develop through their active role as voluntary enlistees in the Iran-Iraq war a “ culture of death ”, wherein the quest for the identity of martyr takes the place of a process of subjectivation.
Fundamentalist Islamic ideology and war fanaticism induce behaviors of narcissistic withdrawal, which prevent these youths from attaining the dimension of adult sexuality and going on from there to appropriate a discourse for themselves within a repressive society.
Through the clinical case of a former adolescent soldier, this article tries to show how this war has become the only response – in the form of an impasse – to adolescent processes for thousands of young Iranians.
Khapta Akhmedova : the shattered future
The author approaches the principle difficulty of adolescents in a refugee camp: their inability to project themselves into the future.
“ When we began to work with adolescents who have been through war, we observed that their “ past ” was limited to the period when they experienced the war. We also noted that their imaginings about the war were either absent or traumatizing. ”
Several clinical observations support this assessment and allow for three conclusions :
– one must not proceed too quickly with adolescents in modifying their image of the future
– one must not create images for them
– one must not fear their terrible images
Kury Idrissov : clinical work in ethno-therapy
The author presents a clinical example relevant to the ethno-therapeutic method applied to some adolescents in Chechnya.
Frédérique Drogoul : firsthand accounts from chechnya
The authors recount tragic events experienced by four adolescents in Chechnya; their repercussions of these; the kinds of psychical defence that were observed; the therapeutic treatment that was set up.