The addiction object is presented as a psychical operator of subjective experience. The logic of addiction functions against a background of trauma. Through the rhythm, the cadence, of substance use, the early dysrhythmias that cause feelings of impingement can be regulated. In the psychic configurations presented here, addiction is not merely a quest for pleasure; it is positioned as a regulator of sensorial and drive activity.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 153-165.
In additions, the body that is “controlled” a restrained object; the control here is its “imprisonment”. What the addict, particularly the adolescent, is fleeing, is affective dependence and the re-sexualization in puberty of his or her Oedipal bonds and transferences; such behavior is a sign of being controlled by a dependent relationship, the relation to the pregenital and pre-Oedipal Superego, which frequently causes an unconscious sense of guilt.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 141-152.
Understanding the phenomena of control in the adolescent requires a deep dive into the today’s virtual world. The main formal change linked to our modern world is mastery of the image, of imaginary museums, as a way of shaping the body image. Whipping out the cultural object that is the smartphone acts as a shield to protect against certain moments in speaking and can potentially become a relationship object in the encounter between the adolescent and the clinician.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 129-140.
Analysis of sound in an adolescent boy who is prone to acoustic-verbal hallucinations leads a to a reflection on the condensation function of hallucination in adolescence, and resonates with the archaic and Oedipal registers, narcissistic and objectal issues, and, lastly, with the current outcome of these, which is between melancholic impasse and masochistic re-binding.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 115-127.
Using three cases drawn from research on the subjectivation of adolescent mothers in Martinique, this article analyses how motherhood can help raise awareness about possible ways out of the relation of control. The participants’trajectories have to do with boundaries and with affective deficiencies, reminding us of the importance of intersubjective spaces in providing support, encouraging speech, and helping bring about the process of re-empowerment that leads to subjectivation.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 101-113.
Using experience in a center for adolescent girls who engage in prostitution, the authors offer some thoughts about what happened at the institutional level. They investigate the relationships between control, the institution and the social meta-framework, and suggest that the particular place of these adolescent attacks on the adolescent body be understood in relation to past traumatic experiences.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 87-99.
In A Girl’s Story, A. Ernaux ends the fragmented story of her adolescence with the revelation that she was assaulted the first time she had sex. This event, the repetition and outcome of childhood traumas whose sexual origin is diluted by the author in the socius, triggers a phenomenon of passionate control laden with symptoms. Subjectivation through literary sublimation is both the subject matter and matrix of this work, and transforming the control into a cultural object that can be shared.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 71-85.
Using a clinical case, we will argue that the violent sexual act is a condensed expression of an adolescent process punctuated by control and attempts to break free. Based on the analysis of transference movements, we will develop the idea that this act attests to an attempt to break free from (narcissistic and objectal) confinement, an attempt that transference will try to support, put to work, and transform on the way towards symbolization.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 57-69.
Here the author makes a distinction between functional control (whose reparative and structuring function fosters narcissism) and regressive kinds of control (which are seen in perverse aberrations). This clinical study also takes in heroic identification and the quest for a place within a genealogy, along with tyrannical, dependent, pathological, or violent adolescents and parental alienation syndrome. As an approach to these aberrations, we call attention to the function of an attraction force of the psyche.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 43-56.
This article proposes the new concept of a primary Oedipus complex that is structurally deformed by the pressure of infantile polymorph sexuality in both normal and pathological development. Correlatively, splitting is considered internal to all repression. A clinical case is used to illustrate the dialectic of an incestuous regressive psychical relationship with the primal maternal object in an adolescent boy and his attempts to make a third-party paternal referent out of fragments of a representation of the Oedipal father.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 29-42.