How can we approach the relationship between the works of J. Lacan and the treatment of adolescents when the actual topic of adolescence seems to be absent from J. Lacan’s work? It can be argued that J. Lacan, by relying on the notion of “structure” rather than that of “development”, substitutes questions about the body, and in particular about puberty and pubertal development, and uses instead a language that specifies effects of pubertal development without designating them as such.
This article is an invitation to read M. Benyamin’s book, Le travail du préconscient à l’épreuve de l’adolescence (Preconscious work challenged by adolescence). It will present the major axes of Benyamin’s thinking that give the clinician an original and captivating insight into the preconscious, as well as the psychosomatic and psychoanalysis of the adolescent.
The observation of human suffering often takes place from distance achieved by disavowing emotional states which, nevertheless, often seem decisive for the observer. This paper will attempt to investigate this hypothesis using the example of a research-intervention mission in an institution for adolescents living through familial break-up. Deeply troubled by the strangely disaffected voice of an adolescent girl, the observer is obliged to drop the distanced attitude of the expert. What bothers him is not the history of this young girl, but what it recalls of his own family experience, which gets mixed up with scientific observation. The return to this “unconscious of the observation” forms the basis of what we could call an initiation.
The psychic suffering of adolescent girls at school often takes the form of verbal aggression, for the most part trivialized by young people while decried by professionals. Using a study carried out with school principals, this paper explores the defensive function of this trivialization as a way of putting the force of drives at a distance, of expressing narcissistic preoccupations, and of dealing psychically with the intrusion of puberty and the question of identity. Mediation workshops are presented as an opportunity to treat these issues in a different way, a way that is more open to oneself and to others.
The adolescent tries to construct a language attesting to his revolt. However, the demands of the code inherent in all speech compel him to the organization of sophisticated rules, and it would be a mistake to see this as ruining classical language. This paper looks at norms that are called into question by creative processes born from revolt and excess.
The author conceives of the issue of change in language in adolescence as the working of that mutative dimension of which the entire pubertary process is an expression. The destitution which can at any moment seize upon a word attest to the lack which is consubstantial with any language. The research carried out by the adolescent consists of unveiling this signifying lyingwhile assuring himself of the permanence of the register of language. This « work » would be more generally inscribed in that regime of proof of which other people, more than ever, remain the guarantors. It is by the other that the address and its reception would be assured of a kind of permanence, despite the signifying lack.
In the course of prevention network in CRIPS, the author presents a research carried out on the the language underlying the actions of communication and prevention of Aids towards young people. The aim was to analyze, amid every single act of communication the representations covering words in order to guarantee that the messages that are emitted do indeed refer to the realities and values that organize on the one hand the sociolinguistic universe of the adults and on the other, that of the youths. The question thus asked is whether the modes of expresion can be transposed one from the other.
The session and its continuum in everyday life must of course be considered as a third-party relation; in it, « two people looking at each other » are brought together and compromised under the same «other» gaze ; a group is formed, trust (and illusion) shared… The lighthouse, initially unknown (a stranger), inspires exchanges that are more and more familiar: talking replaces being looked at. Thanks to this third-party construction, the interactions that define the site can henceforth be interpreted or « reconstructed ».
The language of adolescents is a symptom, necessitating both psychical elaboration and the social and cultural inscription of symbolic practices. Linguistic practices cannot be reduced to the rupture of codes, but rather constitute a language of transit that speaks as much of the urgent need to communicate as of the even more imperious need to not be found, in order to confront the physical, psychical and social upheavals which animate them. Adolescent speech thus becomes a place where the desire of the subject can manage to say itself, outside of the mother tongue, and language may be conceived of as a metonymical representation of the gestating identity.
With the intensification and increasing complexity of communications using new technologies, a new public space is emerging, one which goes beyond the virtual/real division, into an interweaving of social arrangements and partially virtual communities. The « being-together » of adolescents is expressed in this space by a reconfiguration of different forms of interaction, using « chat-French ». Are these digital language practices an obstacle to the acquisition of linguistic and social abilities ?
Adolescence, 2012, 30, 1, 217-229.
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