Testimonies of video games’ excessive players lead to questions about the human condition: How can forge an identity for oneself and build an itinerary within the « societies of the instant », characterised by uncertainty and disinclination ? The desire for recognition is carried out in new inter-subjective structures which control even the autonomy of individuals. Highlight of the culture of the image and of the interactiveness wherein the body occupies a particular position – missing in the flesh, but at the helm of the avatar, the pixelated body. Insofar as they offer the possibility of living experiences with others, video games appear to be a favourable place in which to fabricate an identity.
The problems relating to unaccompanied international minors we receive in the « Maisons des Adolescents » are complex. Studies about mental health of these young people are still few. Most of them must go through their identity construction period alone and have often experienced repeated trauma and multiple bereavements. It seems appropriate to receive these young people in a treatment setting, like the cross-cultural consultations, which enables the emergence of cultural representations and takes into account pre, per and post-migration experiences to restore the construction process of identity.
Though the exepriences of isolated foreign youths are varied and each has his or her particular history, these adolescents have some psychopathological problems in common. A considerable number of these young people present clinical symptoms of trance or possession, called DTD (dissociative trance disorder) in the DSM IV. Symptoms of trance and possession are probably under-diagnosed in western countries because of cultural bias and an insufficient understanding of dissociative disorders. Patients who present these symptoms are often subject to diagnostic errors, especially diagnoses of psychosis or borderline states, leading to treatments that can aggravate symptoms. These symptoms have multiple functions in isolated foreign youths and should be analyzed in view of the specific stage of development which is adolescence, especially its issues of identity construction. In order to gain a better understanding of the subjective experience of these young people, it is necessary that the therapeutic setting take into account the transcultural dimension and pre-, peri-, and post-migratory issues. We will bring our hypotheses to bear on a review of the psychoanalytic literature and clinical observations.
Children and adolescents adopted internationally experience not only a passage from one kinship relation to another, but also from one country, one culture to another. To make sense of what is in play in the here-and-now of family interaction, we must view it from multiple angles, relying on a transcultural approach to treat the issue of the child’s otherness in all its complexity. This reading is carried out along several axes : the transgenerational history of the parent or parents, the child’s history and the consequences of his or her living conditions prior to the adoption, the adopted child’s multiple loyalties and sympathies, and the family’s representation of the child’s otherness. Only such a mixture of readings can re-establish a psychical truth that comes close to the child’s history, with no discontinuity between the before and after, and offer an approach to coexistence of diverse affiliations in the child adopted abroad without this threatening the parent-child bond.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°3, pp. 521-530.
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