The search for origins in adoptive families has mainly played out in fantasy, imagining the history of the child and his biological parents. Today, new questions are emerging in the context of ever more frequent instances where the biological family reaches out to the adoptee on social media. At this point, the real breaks in, forcing itself on the adolescent, regardless of his inward processing of questions about his origins.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 1, 245-255.
La quête des origines dans les familles adoptives se joue principalement sur un plan fantasmatique, interrogeant l’histoire de l’enfant et de ses parents. Aujourd’hui, de nouvelles questions émergent dans un contexte de prises de contact de plus en plus fréquentes par la famille biologique, via les réseaux sociaux. Le réel vient alors faire effraction, s’imposant à l’adolescent, en dépit de son élaboration intime de la problématique des origines.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 1, 245-255.
The unusual case of Hebrew illustrates the itinerary of the adoption of a language that is both old and new in the 19th century. What psychical processes underlie the adoption of this new language that will become of mother tongue? Between the desire to forget and the desire to reconstruct, with impromptu reminiscences of the past, this process of adoption and subjectivation attests to a new psychical filiation as recounted by the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 823-832.
Adoption revives the psychical stakes of the debt proper to every filiation, a debt that feels unbearable in adolescence. Adolescent protest in adoptive filial relationships has a specific characteristic, demolishing the theme of truth and putting in its place that of parental legitimity. This is not without consequences for adoption protocols.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 795-805.
Adoption is not predictive of psychopathological troubles in adolescence. Nevertheless, clinicial experience shows that there is a tendency towards acting out in some adopted adolescents who are “potientially vulnerable” insofar as they present narcissistic fragility.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 785-794.
abandonment, the necessary prelude to adoption, is here conceived of as the first step that enables filiation. The adoptive child must himself abandon his birth parents in order to adopt his new parents. This reappropriation of abandonment is made inevitable by the subjectivation of adolescence. It requires that one get past the real trauma of rejection in order to inscribe it as the structuring trauma of the loss and the gift. It affects every subject when he or she re-establishes filiation in adolescence.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 773-783.
Two clinical cases will be used to support the thesis that the term “biological parent” is without meaning, an impossible (real) that is unsettling for adopted children. This would be the case for any child, even one who was not adopted, for whom the notion of biological parent belongs to the register of the unsaid. The biological parent belongs to the real and has no place. He/she is an oxymoron. Only parents who assume the responsibilities of parents count for the child. They are the parents the child has adopted.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 763-772.
This article tells of the psychotherapeutic treatment of an adolescent who was abandoned, adopted and placed in an educational institution. It deals with the impact in adolescence of earlier experiences of abandonment and the later ability of adoptive parents and institutions to cope with these. The steps of the therapeutic process and the troubles presented by the young boy are described through transferential exchanges and adjustments which give meaning to the treatment and its evolution.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 753-761.
Revisiting some moments in the psychotherapy of an adolescent girl adopted as a baby, who later sought treatment after a suicide attempt, the analytical process is view as analogous to a process of reciprocal adoption, including the adoptive parents who entrust the child to the therapist. The analytical work fosters in the adolescent the adoption of split-off parts of herself, leading her to re-appropriate her history for herself. Becoming and adult entails the possibility to choose one’s affiliations: she will be able to adopt in her turn.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 733-742.
After reviewing the different axes of filiation according to J. Guyotat, with which the narrative axis may be associated (B. Golse, M. R. Moro), and relocating the issue of psychical bisexuality with regard to the precursors of sexual differentiation, this article will offer some reflections and clinical illustrations of adolescents’ aggression as it relates to identity and narrative filiation on the one hand, and the psychical bisexuality of adoptive parents on the other.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 705-716.