The authors will attempt to show that group psychodrama is a treatment format particularly suited to adolescents, who may not always find it easy to verbalize. The analysis of a psychodramatic game will illustrate how this form of treatment can help restart the inter-binding drive and support scenic thought grounded in the relational action itself.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 521-531.
In today’s societal context, current treatment and its violence raises questions about the role of the interpretative procedure in analysis. The dream of a pure and timeless act associated with the esthetic abstraction of psychoanalysis is confronted with the need for a way of representing that can “makes do with” the tangle of the symptom. One must follow its strands one by one, in order to detect their imaginary, real and symbolic traces and find out what is holding them together.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 507-519.
The author leads a group therapy for patients between thirteen and eighteen years old hospitalized for severe mental anorexia. The group provides an exceptional vantage point for observing this radical form of adolescent disorder and the traumatic effects of puberty’s eruption in subjects whose narcissistic foundations are shaky. It shows the this type of patient can benefit therapeutically from a group speaking space inspired by psychoanalysis and framed and supported by therapists.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 493-506.
Using clinical material gleaned from cases in pediatric surgery, the authors will explore issues of desire, female identity construction, filiation and the complex but fruitful joint work of psychologist and surgeon. Two clinical cases of adolescent girls presenting a genital excrescence (nymphomegaly and clitoral lump, respectively) will illustrate these issues.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 477-491.
This article examines gender dysphoria with reference to the concept of the erotic body. Starting with this idea of the subjective body and its rearrangements in adolescence, the author presents two clinical cases which appear to show the uniqueness of each demand and its possible role in the subject’s libidinal economy.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 463-476.
Over the last few years, more and more young people have called into question the well-marked boundaries of gender, the couple and sexuality: bisexual or pansexual, gender-neutral or –fluid, transgender, they refuse labels, identity fixations, and demand the right to invent themselves completely, to shatter the boundaries that distinguish heterosexuality and homosexuality, male and female, boy and girl.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 447-462.
Dodji is a Togolese patient who has been living in the streets since late childhood. His integumentary self-mutilations and his insomnia are marks of suffering, that of his history and of his position as a vagrant. These symptoms also attest to an atypical connection between the psychic and the corporal presented as something necessary for being able to tolerate reality, culture and existence. This clinical case can serve as an instructive illustration of the specific character of adolescent disorder.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 435-445.
Using two brief clinical vignettes showing two young adults – one who never presented any troubling signs in childhood, the other treated for psychotic symptoms – the author will look retroactively at the twists and turns of the adolescent process and the role that this psychic experience may or may not have played in the evolution of their lives. Is it possible that this psychic experience of adolescence is not accessible to everyone?
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 423-433.
Both the quest for meaning and creativity are amplified in adolescence. If meaning is a quest, what path leads to it? Is creativity a way to attain it? Should access to meaning be legitimately considered an essential aim of therapy (defined as a technique for establishing or restoring the normality)? If so, is it reasonable to conceive of creativity as a discipline that is essential for mobilizing adolescents and their caregivers?
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 405-421.
This article refers to the theoretical bases of understanding the adolescent processes as conceived by Gianluigi Monniello and myself. After a review of the levels of the dual work of subjectivation, we will study what constitutes their transitional aspect and specifically the place of the sexualized body in it.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 393-404.