The notion of violence in psychopathology has mainly to do with the amount of excitation that is unleashed. When thinking about violence in adolescence we must consider what has upset the adolescent’s economy to the point of overwhelming psychical resources. At this time of life, there is a conjunction between the sources of internal excitations and of excessive external stimulation, while investments of relations with the parents no longer have the same role in the psychical economy, hence the “trauma of adolescence”.
After having the described the ordinary complaints, as a necessity in those days of adolescence, our text, starting from a few clinical vignettes, shows the several specificities of the surge and the therapeutic approach of the adolescent complaint. The part played by a traumatic scene liable to expresse the complaint and its content are facts of a narcissistic cathexes specifically intertwined with libidinal cathexes are thus considered as typical of complaint at adolescence.
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