Aesthetic emotion arises in an individual at the particular moment when he or she is captivated by the unique beauty of a work of art, by a shape or a word that reveals a deeply intimate yet universal truth. Such rare and precious moments open up a space for playing and creativity in the monotony of existence or in pathological repetition. We will attempt to study the context of two moments of aesthetic emotion we observed in an art therapy workshop for adolescents hospitalized full-time.
Here we wish to delineate the contemporary social imaginary world of adolescence. Our purpose belongs to qualitative sociology, i. e. an attempt to describe phenomenologically a few signs selected as being typical but which no objective statistics would legitimate. The author wishes to find her way about the contradiction existing between the advertising exhibition of the handsome young bodies and some characteristics of adolescent aesthetics as it may be caught within their choice of self‑presentation, of music, comic strips, etc
Based on the notions of « body image « (P. Schilder) and of « pathosformel « (A. Warburg), this study proposes to revisit Boticelli’s pictorial work from the point of view of adolescent perception, as an idealized fiction resting upon threefold suffering : the inaccessible quest for purity, the dimension of manic excess in relation to future time, and the nostalgic disappearance of the time of childhood that is irremediably gone. The method used is that of « interactions of psychoanalysis «, that is, not the use of psychoanalytical method to decipher the model, but rather the placement of artwork’s sensitive listening into tension, or into resonance, with psychoanalytic treatment, in this case that of adolescence.
Here we wish to delineate the contemporary social imaginary world of adolescence. Our purpose belongs to qualitative sociology, i. e. an attempt to describe phenomenologically a few signs selected as being typical but which no objective statistics would legitimate. The author wishes to find her way about the contradiction existing between the advertising exhibition of the handsome young bodies and some characteristics of adolescent aesthetics as it may be caught within their choice of self-presentation, of music, comic strips, etc.
Narcissistic, homoerotic, even “ feminine ”, the adolescent is passionately attracted to the beautiful, by the beauty of the image of the body, and all that involves the perception of an ideal bodily representation, i.e. a fantasy image, is coveted and wished of oneself. However, if homoerotism is inherent in narcissistic puberty, homosexuality, as gender and as “ structured ” inclination of the sexual life, appears to be related to the infantile archaic and in particular to find its essence in the fundamental aesthetic meeting of infancy.
This article describes an original way of mediation that was used in a « Maison des Adolescents » : cosmetics. The workshop is lead by a professional socio-beautician together with a caregiver (nurse or educator) in a healthcare team. The beauty therapist evaluates every one of the adolescents’ requests and then offers them cosmetic procedures in line with what they wish, ask for or want to try. They thus learn to take care of themselves, of their desires, their beauty and their bodies. Everything that is experienced by the teenagers is then included in the therapeutic setting. This activity is very sought after by adolescents and causes great changes in the way that the teenagers view and represent themselves.
The teenager is extremely sensitive to his image. This one is dreaded as much as invested with strength and fascination. In this article, we present an observation that illustrates the complex and ambivalent perceptions of a body full of diverse troubles. A body which seems to be the Pandora’s box of all the fears arisen from the childhood and from the adolescence, and a body-shop window, a narcissistic facade by the glance of the other one, but at the same time being afraid that this glance sees inside herself, its intimacy, its thoughts, its fears, where from this frequent paranoid aspect in the adolescence.
revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 779-785.
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