The dynamics of the subjective appropriation of the changing body and the narcissicistic-identity reconfigurations at work in a suicidal adolescent girl actualize the vicissitudes of primary object relations on the scene of the individual somatic body as well as on that of the group body. On these scenes of the body, one can discern an attempt to reconstitute the equipment of power weakened by the profound transformations of puberty. But also, the search for a unifying double can be brought to light. The identification process is characterized here by the disjunction of imitation and introjection.
Dos fragmentos de la cura analítica de un adolescente nos proporcionan la oportunidad de examinar bajo qué condiciones pudimos emprender dicho trabajo y a qué costo pudimos proseguirlo. La noción de ética resulta determinante para entender tanto las características del compromiso inicial que conlleva el tratamiento como las implicaciones que representa llevarlo adelante, organizadas en torno a un acting out peculiarmente ejemplar.
The narrator of the autobiographical story Cousin K is a young male writer who retraces the course of his life before becoming the murderer of a hitch-hiker who asked him for assistance. We will consider the impact on the hero of several accumulated traumatisms in childhood and adolescence (early maternal rejection, direct confrontation with his father’s death, perverse influence) and their possible role in the emergence of a cruelty drive. We will advance the hypothesis that the recourse to a criminal act is a search for triumph over the object and for omnipotence in the face of a threat of annihilation.
Two extracts from the psychoanalytic cure of an adolescent are hereby the opportunity to examine under which conditions this work may have been undertaken and at what cost one was able to go on with it. The ethical approach is essential both to assess the characteristics of the level of commitment in the analysis and the goals at stake enabling it to go on around an acting out that was more than exemplary.
The escalation of self-destructive acting out in adolescence is viewed as a compulsive repetition of traumatic or repeated microtraumatic events. These traumatic events, which occurred during early childhood, are or were linked to the absence of the object and the subsequent sense of emptiness that was experienced. The different functions of compulsive repetition are then discussed in the context of identity search and borderline pathology during adolescence. Finally, the author discusses the mental work required of the therapist when working with adolescents presenting these types of issues, particularly when speech cannot be used for intersubjective communication.
This paper presents the psychoanalysis of a fourteen year-old girl, who had experienced a lack of containing from early in her life. In the beginning of the analysis she was superficially verbal, but gradually she regressed and slept most of the time during the sessions. Sometimes she would suddenly wake up very scared and look at me as if I were a monster, but when she saw that it was me she would fall asleep again. This went on for over a year, and it was reported that she had fewer problems outside the session. Gradually she became more verbal, speaking with a soft voice, more in touch with her inner emotions.
This article offers a reading of pairs of pupils’ outbursts/teachers’ responses, as seen from the conceptual field of psychoanalysis, and considers these events as drive creations, the subjective finds of desiring subjects. This postulate is based on the conceptual and practical elaborations of Freud and J. Lacan, which account for events, similar to pupils’ outbursts and teachers’ responses, that arise between patient and therapist in the practice of analytic treatment. This kind of heuristic position allows us to hypothesize that some pupils resort to acting out during class and that the responses elicited from the teacher have to do with « knowing how to handle them ». From this perspective, adolescent inventions and their adult echoes bear witness to a new academic reality that allows adolescents and teachers to build together. These conducts are brought into focus through interpretive analysis of the discourse of the subjects of the lesson as they talk about what they are experiencing.
Deux fragments de la cure analytique d’un adolescent sont l’occasion d’examiner à quelles conditions put s’engager ce travail, et à quel prix il put ensuite se poursuivre. La notion d’éthique s’y avère déterminante, autant pour saisir les caractéristiques de l’engagement initial dans la cure, que les enjeux de sa poursuite, qui se nouèrent autour d’un acting-out particulièrement exemplaire.
Il s’agit de proposer une lecture du couple emportements des élèves/réponses des professeurs, depuis le champ conceptuel de la psychanalyse, et de considérer ces faits comme des créations pulsionnelles, des trouvailles subjectives de sujets désirants. Ce postulat s’appuiera sur l’élaboration conceptuelle et praxique de Freud et J. Lacan, qui rend compte d’événements analogues aux éruptions des élèves et aux réponses des professeurs, survenant dans la pratique de la cure entre analyste et patient. Une telle position heuristique permettra d’établir l’hypothèse que certains élèves ont recours à l’acting outen cours et que des réponses qui surgissent chez leur professeur sont de l’ordre du « savoir y faire ». Dans cette perspective, les inventions adolescentes et leurs échos adultes sont les témoins d’une réalité scolaire nouvelle qui permet à des adolescents et à des professeurs de se construire l’un avec l’autre. Ces conduites seront pointées par une analyse interprétative du discours des sujets de la leçon quand ils parlent de ce qu’ils vivent.
Adolescence 2012, T. 30 n°3, pp. 659-671
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