The question of gender has moved to the forefront of politics and has even become an issue of culture, or indeed, civilization. It is stimulating to confront two types of extreme attitude towards anatomical sexual difference: that of J. Butler, extending the disavowal of anatomical difference and those of the rituals of excision and circumcision, which try to increase the difference by created an « enhanced reality ». Psychotherapies show how the adolescent’s problematic can meet with these same disavowals for internal reasons, not just cultural ones.
In our encounters with a certain number of adolescents who commit sexual abuse, we have observed the absence of feelings associated with these acts, while they show no sign of disassociation or deficit. However, this lack or remorse can be considered as a flaw in adolescent subjectivation, resulting from the omnipresence of an archaic superego figure. The primordial maternal imago constituting this figure is neither integrated, nor put into internal conflict, but projected onto the object rendered “ indifferent ” to serve as an outlet for drive excitation. The splitting of the ego is not enough to assure a minimal distinction between “ good and bad object ” and introduces a confusion which results in the criminal act. The emergence of a transferential guilt may be the consequence of restarting the associative process in the treatment.
Psychoanalytical teamwork is recommended in the treatment of the particular form of transference that routinely occurs in the institutional treatment of young patients suffering from psychotic disorders or from behavioral pathology (borderline cases). The degree of alienation is such that repetition will tend to be induced in the other – the therapist, in this case – due to the absence of constituted fantasy in certain sectors of the patient’s psyche. It is as if the restitution (Freud, 1937) and subjective appropriation of these elements by the patient necessitated a detour through the psychical space of the caregivers (which is very trying for them), obliging them first of all to elaborate these subjective elements among themselves.
The biblical text of the “ Prodigal Son ”, dealing with the father-son relation, allows us to situate this relation within several different mythical fields, among them the field of psychoanalysis. Like Christianity and Indo-European culture, the theme of Don Juan in the XVIIth century will produce a rupture and introduce something new into the order of transmission. The “ nuptial home ” emerges with the return of the feminine, in the figure of Abraham, who is both masculine and feminine.
The avatar may be treated as a double of the self or as a companion, a guide whom one follows or a slave to whom one gives orders. But in any case, its owner is invited to engage here in three complementary forms of symbolization: sensory-motor, imaged, and verbal.
Thus it can embody a fragment of oneself, a person one has known, admired or feared, even someone that one has imagined on the basis of stories one has heard or a family legend. This exploration can enable the construction of a potential space or, on the contrary, foster disavowal. Asking a player to speak of the choice and the history of his avatar is an essential moment of psychotherapy.
With second modernity, the construction of the meaning of a school system in the throes of de-institutionalization is no longer transcendent but immanent for pupils. The question of school experience and how students feel about their academic life needs to be raised. Our investigation leads us to posit that the feeling of academic suffering is becoming structural, albeit collectively disavowed. This article tries to shed light on the meaning of this collective disavowal and social « disappearing » of academic suffering, by the yardstick of contemporary social mutations, before setting up an ideal-typical typology of forms of pupils’ academic suffering.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 637-664.
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