This article will study the various kinds of empathy in a support group, in both the psychotherapists and the adolescents who take part. This group is one kind of treatment space in a hospital for adolescents experiencing severe psychological crisis. Data were collected over several months so as to give a new perspective of the group’s chaotic movements and were written up as a narrative.
This article will study the various kinds of empathy in a support group, in both the psychotherapists and the adolescents who take part. This group is one kind of treatment space in a hospital for adolescents experiencing severe psychological crisis. Data were collected over several months so as to give a new perspective of the group’s chaotic movements and were written up as a narrative.
Starting with a definition of meta-settings, this article will look at how, in free-association groups for adolescents, social and group meta-settings are used to redefine spatio-temporal continuity in order to compensate for the weakness of other constants that have been unsettled by adolescence.
Dependence is part of the adolescent process as it relates to the reactivation of drives and the changes this entails. Group psychotherapy is also the space where dependence can be reenacted in transferences onto the setting and the therapist. The session, which calls into question the subject’s borders, echoes primary experiences of identification, but the group process will restart conflicts as part of the processes of differentiation and identity construction.
The theme of cannibalism emerged in an unusual way in an adolescent therapy group and was a recurring theme throughout its history. This article will study the polysemia of cannibalistic fantasies as the group process evolves. According to our hypothesis, the role of group illusion enabled a passage from a melancholy form of cannibalism to an incestuous one, and afterwards to cannibalism that was a defense against genital sexuality.
Faced with the myriad types of group therapy treatments used with adolescents, the psychoanalytic approach to groups needs reflection on the treatment setting. The article shows that, aside from the therapeutic benefits for patients, groups provide a terrain for important research.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 1, 9-16.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7