Starting with Freud’s originary distinction between subject of the ego and object of the ego, and thus between subjectal and objectal poles, subjectality is conceived of as the process that enables the emergence of a creative, autonomous self, shedding light, through their disturbances, on some essential aspects of the setting and of the counter-transference which determine the possibility or impossibility of genuine psychoanalytical work.
Archives par mot-clé : Counter-transference
Chantal Giddey, Sandra Lopez : caught up in the game, caught up in the body
We will offer some thoughts on the issue of the co-therapists’ bodies in individual psychoanalytic psychodrama for adolescents. We will try to show how the corporal experience of co-therapy gives birth to psychical representations that can be used in psychodramatic play. We will also investigate the difficulties of a treatment process that implies the engagement of the whole body. Lastly, we will discuss the therapeutic indications for such treatment and the pitfalls of seduction when dealing with adolescents who are often open to the danger of being overwhelmed by their drives.
Stefano Bolognini : punkabbestia : a tiring consultation
The author re-transcribes the single encounter he had with a « punkabbestia » adolescent, who comes to the consultation at his parents’ request, for a possible treatment referral. The therapist’s counter-transference is analyzed in detail.
Isée Bernateau : a loving counter-transference
A teenager followed in a day hospital presents transitory behavior that causes an « hysterization » of the counter-transference in certain women who deal with him. This behavior is linked with the sexual traumatic problems present in his family. It allows him to remobilize drive activity experienced as threatening for his psychical integrity, and to interiorize the female components of this drive activity.
Gianluigi Monniello : self-analysis and the treatment of the borderline adolescent
Adolescence puts the course of early development back into play and works towards the expansion of the psychical apparatus. At puberty, the adolescent is called to provided himself and others with a stable narration (though it may be reworked) of his history and his childhood. The elaboration of puberty entails complex and difficult psychical work, and exposes one to the organization of a psychopathology.
In the borderline adolescent especially, the needs of evolution activate anxiety and conflict in a significant way. The conflict is born of traumatic cores from the past which, on the one hand, generate the fear of re-living fragmentation and, on the other hand, the expectation of the inevitable and continual actualization of the traumatic experience.
The analyst then is responding to the adolescent’s difficult process of becoming aware of himself (his difficulty in making his affective states legible for himself and others) as well as to his perception of not having enough « auto » psychical processus (empty and chaotic feeling of self) through a lengthy self-analytical work. This is the start of knowing and transforming the therapeutic relation which is continually at risk of shutting itself up in confused unity and an endless mirroring function.
Jean-Bernard Chapelier : freud and the wolf man : a shared pubertaire scene
The case of the « Wolf Man », a young man who presented grave problems in adolescence, is revisited here in light of the concept of the pubertaire scene. Indeed, when we look closely at it, this primal scene exhumed by Freud is in fact a pubertaire scene co-constructed by Freud and his patient. Starting with this hypothesis, it is possible to explain the failure of the psychoanalytical treatment which will leave the Wolf Man facing a breakdown he could not surmount. This analysis seeks to show the possible effects of the analyst’s unanalyzed pubertaire on his patient.
Stefano Bolognini : the bar in the desert, symmetry et asymmetry in the treatment of difficult adolescents
The author considers the opportunity of specific alternate moments of symmetric-asymmetric relationship (which are to be contained in a classic asymmetric frame) to facilitate analytical work, and to allow interpretations with an analysand who is usually afraid of dependence, hostile to the Super-Ego representatives, in need of non-declared containment and of a basic contribution to the Self cohesion, as the adolescent patient is.
The clinical history illustrates this specific way of working, quite different from the one commonly adopted in the analysis of adult patients.
For instance, the analyst must be able to temporarily renounce, sometimes for a long period, too frequent and brilliant interpretations that would underline the adult’s superiority, which is hard for the adolescent to tolerate.
Férodja Hocini : identification, friendship and transference**
The author seeks to study the links between friendship and process of identification at the time of childhood and adolescence. As she retraces the treatment of one of her female teenager patient in psychotherapy, the author tells the story of a really singular friendship between two girls, two soul sisters that only death could tear apart. The analysis of the transfero-counter-transferential movements leads on one hand to release the therapist from the process of idealization in which her patient tends to enclose her. On the other hand and above all, it leads to the transforming of the therapeutic relation, which is at risk of getting lost in a confused unity.
Philippe Gutton : the mystical paradox
The mystical evolution of St. Theresa of Lisieux is examined using a model of the state of illusion (according to Winnicott’s approach). The latter, defined by its paradoxical quality – “ me-not me ”, “ living-dying ” – is fragile before the threat of a paradoxical injunction. Throughout her childhood, this threat was acted out by what Theresa, after her mother’s death, called “the moms”. She had a very eventful childhood which would turn mystical when, in adolescence, her illusion tutors were condensed into “ Jesus-moms ”. “ Conversion ” she calls it, a transference soon consolidated by her Carmelite vocation and her doctrine.
Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°1, pp. 65-88.
Marie-Hélène Séguin : on the absent object
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.
Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°4, pp. 991-1001.