A series of painting entitled the “Football Players” modifies Nicolas de Staël’s way of painting by relying on the canvas, making him worry about how to represent a present experience which “has trouble” taking shape. This pictorial turning point can be interpreted as the translation of adolescent tension that is trying to stay close to the vital form of experience and which is erased as soon as it takes shape.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 417-423.
This article shows the importance of anality in the appearance, disappearance and transformations of obesity in adolescence. For Danielle, a fantasy of fecalization of the Body-ego seriously mars adolescent narcissism and Ego ideal, and prevents anality from being properly integrated into the feminine Ego. For Camille, it is the opposite: a minimal fantasy sphincterization of the Ego enables a well-tempered way out of obesity and melancholy formlessness.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 401-413.
The description of a therapy group using the mediating forms of dance and writing in a day-hospital shows how unsymbolized memory traces emerge and are transformed through group associations, both corporal and verbal. Thus new representations of the body and its origins – vectors of subjectivation – are created.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 389-400.
This article will approach the Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian art form that mixes wrestling and dancing, as being related to the adolescent process. What sets this activity apart is the arrangement of the participants: the Roda (circle) puts into play the body, a possible sublimation of violence, and the offer of a narcissistic and objectal encounter, within the containing setting. This creative corporal playing is connected with adolescent drive life. It could be developed as an interesting form of therapeutic mediation supporting the work of subjectivation.: adolescents could be invited to enact their pubertary violence through this playing.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 377-387.
By means of a case study, the authors demonstrate the importance of a psycho-phenomenological therapeutic setting, which brings together a phenomenological component, where work that enacts primal processes in and through movement, and a psychoanalytical component where primary and secondary processes can be endowed with representation. The proposed psychotherapy enables the adolescent, who is locked into passages to the act, to metabolize his aggressiveness in a new way.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 363-376.
Against the prevailing current of Freudian theory, which cites maternal excess in the mother-daughter relation, this work will show that it is relevant to speak of paternal control in cases where the absolute demand for excellence sets up a closed system dedicated to the athletic project. One of the consequences of the internalized mandate to become a champion is the freezing of the adolescent process. The sport of tennis, which is marked by a noticeable frequency of father-daughter pairings, will serve as an example.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 345-362.
Using my clinical experience in the world of high-level tennis, I will study adolescent players’ relation with eroticism and auto-eroticism through certain bodily and muscular movements that are repeated and sometimes associated with physical and emotional pain, in order to show the aspect of female masochism in this intensive practice of the sport. To shed light on the kind of masochism first theorized by Freud in 1924, I will try to make a distinction between the enjoyment and pleasure that may be experienced by the adolescent player who engages in tennis at a high level.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 331-343.
The construction of representations proceeds both from the influence of purposive ideas, certainly shaped in childhood, and of a transformation ensuing from past, present and future experiences. The adolescent’s inscription in the genital order causes these representations to be renegotiated; this is manifested in the making of a plan, such as it is represented to him. The therapeutic setting can signify the importance of establishing a matrix that fosters this work of revisiting through thought. Some episodes from the life of Messi, a famous soccer player, serve as a guiding thread in this study.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 317-330.
Among activities that are supposed to be cultural, sport has been revived as an object of culture and education. Engaging in sports, whether intensively, competitively or remedially, is an offshoot of the cultural superego and represents the paradigm of a more general phenomenon: the strictness of the cultural superego. As a response to the adolescent passage, the sporting solution can thus represent an exemplary alternative allowing one to avoid the adolescent process, insofar as it seals off, more or less effectively, all the tension associated with the trauma of this sexual encounter.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 307-315.
By means of a case study, the authors investigate the practice of high-level sports by young “slaves of glory”, who gain access to the position of demiurge through a disavowal of limits and a fantasy of omnipotence. When the reality of the body and of injuries comes rushing in, these champions start by asking for their “performance machine” to be restored, which gradually leads to an opening up of their inner world and to the emergence of complex pre-existing conflicts.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 295-306.