Using a clinical case, the author will illustrate the psychoanalytic work that can be offered to autistic subjects, by presenting therapeutic steps attesting to the strides that have been made in the development of the bodily ego. The therapeutic proposals consist of welcoming the autisticizing process and offering accommodations, such as sensorial exploration through touch, sharing of affects, and the creation of scenarios involving bodily shapes.
Adolescence, 2023, 41, 1, 179-192.
Man has dreamed of mastering his psychic, ecological and virtual environment, through a frantic race against any form of limit, whether of time, of space, of resources or of the body. The current situation undermines the narrative of man as center of the universe, as he is forced to acknowledge that he is peripheral in relation to what he presumed to dominate. Would the parental generation thus be paying tribute to adolescents for saving them from humiliation? How, then, can one inhabit one’s body and psyche, if the promised future is the end screen?
Adolescence, 2021, 39, 1, 167-186.
The lockdown was a litmus test of the quality of adolescents’ relationship with their parents. Some enjoyed the unexpected availability of their parents; others suffered from being sequestered in close quarters with them. Some continued to gather in groups without regard for the health regulations. Lockdown parties were held in secret, as were many parties after the lockdown, with the same disregard for precautionary measures. This article analyzes such transgressions as a way of fabricating intensity of being, carried out with the ambivalence of a “I know, but still” attitude.
Adolescence, 2021, 39, 1, 57-68.
The 2018 publication of S. Ferrières-Pestureau’sLa violence à l’œuvre (Violence at work) provides a spot-on illustration of the way that art at different times periods has taken up what exceeds the various declensions of the human body that translates its violence. The author of this article relates major events of western history to the pictorial representations that either interpreted or provoked them, noting new perceptions of violence arising from the body.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 475-482.
The author explores the functions of the adolescent body engaged in violent sexual acting-out behavior, using the case of Pierre, 15, who is incarcerated for rape. With reference to the third topic of C. Dejours (2003), we revisit the early phase of the relation with the primal object, then the traumatic deferred action of the pubertary, which puts to the test the topical splitting between the repressed unconscious and the forbidden unconscious that provokes violent sexual acts against the percept.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 1, 33-42.
The story of the transitioning of young Lara in Lukas Dhont’s film Girl leads to reflection on the representation of the body of trans subjects outside of artistic productions. This article offers an analysis of this issue, with reference to studies of the production of transidentity narratives.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 1, 157-163.
Using two clinical vignettes (one from an institutional therapeutic treatment, and the other from an individual treatment), the author investigates issues underlying the apparently “liberated” sexuality of two older adolescents: a tight, reciprocal clinging to the mother, in the absence of internalization of parental imagos that would enable true individuation. He calls attention to the psychopathological and therapeutic consequences of this.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 1, 23-31.
Using clinical encounters with contemporary artists (in this case, Boris), we explore the place of the body in creation, through the notion of rhythm. Rhythm is not limited to rhythmicity or tempo, nor measure alone; rather, it bears witness to the incarnation of internal movement. It is in its incarnation that rhythm exists, in time with the body of the drives that it expresses. The created work will be its echo.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 1, 187-206.
Adolescence is the time of metamorphosis, of encountering the other. But well before the onset of puberty, the child who has received a diagnosis of chronic illness is obliged to confront the arrival of a disquieting stranger who pounces on him: disease. How does puberty fit in with a body already marked by illness? Would not the emergence of the sexual body be a way of truly appropriating the sick body?
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 3, 551-561.
Interventions involving the skin are attempts to redraw the boundaries between inside and outside; they act as a tool for getting through the delicate passage to manhood or womanhood. Hairstyle, skin (make-up, tattoos, piercings, cosmetic surgery) and clothes – every youngster is over-informed about possible looks and how other people will receive them. Such attempts to control one’s self-image or to alter it (through scarification, for example) express the adolescent’s wish to escape from an intolerable identity.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 3, 489-498.