Looking at Freud’s adolescence and his passionate friendships, this article will explore a quest for an alter ego that can regress to the status of narcissistic “controlling” doubles. This can produce a narcissistic wound, as otherness is no longer shown to complete the ego, but to be intolerably different from and independent of it. Moreover, the implications of this can be seen in Freud’s relationship with his daughter Anna.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 13-27.
Cet article explore, depuis l’adolescence de Freud et ses amitiés passionnelles, une quête d’alter ego pouvant régresser au statut de doubles narcissiques « en emprise ». Il peut en résulter une blessure narcissique, l’altérité ne se révélant plus comme complémentaire pour le moi, mais comme une différence et une indépendance intolérables. On pourra par ailleurs en observer les incidences chez sa fille Anna.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 13-27.
The authors explore the specific characteristics of the double in its connection with the figure of the hero, in certain myths and in the family romance of neurotics. The exploration focuses on two things: the “heroic double” as a way of regulating incestual desires of brothers and sisters; and the construction of a “sibling romance” by the adolescent subject, which articulates love and hate towards eroticized figures of the younger sister and the brother.
Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 379-388.
Les auteurs interrogent les spécificités du double dans son articulation à la figure du héros, depuis certains mythes et dans le roman familial des névrosés. Deux visées sont explorées : le « double héroïque » comme ordonnancement du désir incestuel sororal et fraternel ; et la construction d’un « roman sororal et fraternel » par le sujet adolescent, articulant amour et haine auprès des figures érotisées de la sœur et du frère cadets.
Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 379-388.
La réorganisation psychique impliquée par la puberté fait de la réflexivité un axe majeur de l’adolescence qui éclaire autrement la problématique de la subjectivation. Dans ce contexte, la mise en scène de sa propre mort permet paradoxalement de rétablir une forme de réflexivité subjectivante à même de relancer les processus d’appropriation de soi. Ce travail s’étaye sur l’investissement d’un objet-double capable de soutenir la réflexivité en souffrance.
Adolescence, 2015, 33, 4, 859-869.
The adolescent who turns against his own body is often imprisoned in a logic of doubles from which he tries to protect himself and which he tries to escape. This has the advantage of maintaining the illusion of omnipotence he experienced as a child, of projecting it onto the other with accompanying violence, and of stabilizing the latter by turning it back upon itself in a targeted, limited way. The mutilations that he inflicts on himself are thus real witnesses to the illusion that he needs to construct. What is interesting about a work like Verdi’s Le Trouvère is that it gives us access to the mythic scenario underlying this type of behavior and opens it up to analysis. In it we discover, notably, how self-mutilation is for some adolescents a rite of passage allowing them to confront a mythical double, to their detriment at first, but with the possibility of unmasking it later.
This article gives a glimpse of Jean-José Baranès’ book Les balafrés du divan. Essai sur les symbolisations plurielles (“ Scarred by the couch. An essay on plural symbolizations ” Paris : Dunod, 2003), whose main theme is a clinical and theoretical reflection on the work of primary and secondary symbolization carried out in current indications of psychoanalysis.
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.
Is the friend a “ same”, a “ model ”, a “ figure of same-sexed investment ” ? These questions are reviewed using two clinical accounts and several propositions. First of all, the Friend occurs within a potential space, a “ between –two ” and is not to be confused with the subject. Then, it appears clinically (case of Sabrina) that the Friend is often the condition of the subject’s encounter with an object of love and eroticisation. Thus there is a triangulation complex implying : Subject, Friend, love object. A series of dialectical operations define their bonds according to a complex mode of resemblance/difference.
The Freudian model of Œdipal triangulation is mobilized, notably through family romance, to analyze the clinical account of Sophie. Desires that are incestuous insofar as fratricidal would have their place in the terms of romantic vaudeville between Subject, object, Friend… We conclude by suggesting that the juvenile period be considered as a amicable Œdipal romance, forged by investments in the Friend and the object. The concept of the coat of arms completes the dialectical process related to the Subject-Friend bond, thus becoming emblematic of what we call Friendship.
The author envisages the figure of the friend in its attracting role with regard to the register of depression in adolescence. At once caught up in a loss of objects and in the loss of a condition, which he must now subjectivate, the adolescent would find in the person of the friend that actor – facilitating agent, subject of experience and a support to projection and/or identification – able to sustain him effectively in this work which involves, in an essential way, the register of the encounter.