The phenomenon of the imaginary companion is well described among children and elderly people, but is rarely evoked in adolescents. Its manifestation at the age of adolescence is often misinterpreted as delirium and a sign of beginning schizophrenia. In this article we present the case of Julie, a seventeen-year-old teenager, in order to illustrate the hypothesis that the imaginary companion can appear within other psychopathologies than those of psychosis and schizophrenia. The young woman uses an imaginary companion she calls « Monseigneur » (« Mylord ») to compensate for an underlying depression. We describe in detail this clinical situation, the different stages of the therapeutic treatment and the psychological evolution of Julie.
Archives par mot-clé : Imaginary companion
Alexandra Triandafillidis : Eutherian didyme
This paper questions the longing for completeness which is lurking behind the manifold so to say » love experience « . Starting from an heterogeneous documentation, a fiction is here suggested swaying the traditional representation of the mother-child symbiosis towards a representation of the completeness child-placenta : i.e. the » Eutherian didyme » becoming the priviledged metaphorical support enabling to suggest the absolute of completeness.
Such a forever lost didyme feeds an unquenchable quest. The companions of the love experience, whatever it may be, appear to be imperfect substitutes, cathexed with an unattainable mission. They are always more or less » imaginary « .
Jean-François Chiantaretto: Writing about oneself at puberty : a clinical-theoretical approach
Anne Franck wrote and re-wrote her Diary, the re-writing having been interrupted by deportation and death in a Nazi camp. Starting from both these versions, the author gives an account of the evolution with Anne of the discourse about her own self, right at the puberty stage and of the part played by the Diary in the experience of one’s own self being in full development. Here the diary is thought in terms of a container, i.e. as the seat of a task of both memory and renounciation but also as the evidence of an incarnated testimony.