At adolescence, the family novel is replaced by an » anticipatory selffiction « . Such a new romanesque organization plays the part of an auxiliary organizer for adolescent transformations and enables the subject to disentangle himself from the impact of parental images and associated superego rigidities. The birth of enamoration may owe a lot to the sudden coalescence which thus takes place between the anticipatory selffiction and the » exquisite » presentness of the emotional encounter.
We believe that the resurgence of the adolescent process in the adult treatment is not simply a mode of regressive, defensive functioning, but rather an ever active mode of functioning that can result from highly secondarized ways of functioning. The hypothesis is that one never repeats, in the proper sense of the term, in an identical way, but that there is always a conjunction with one’s current mode of being. What is really modified is the passage from growing up to growing old. Adult functioning must pass through the filter of adolescence, not only genitalitized sexualization that this implies, but also a temporal organization that includes death.