Following the collapse of revolutionary utopias, Iranian adolescents develop through their active role as voluntary enlistees in the Iran-Iraq war a “ culture of death ”, wherein the quest for the identity of martyr takes the place of a process of subjectivation.
Fundamentalist Islamic ideology and war fanaticism induce behaviors of narcissistic withdrawal, which prevent these youths from attaining the dimension of adult sexuality and going on from there to appropriate a discourse for themselves within a repressive society.
Through the clinical case of a former adolescent soldier, this article tries to show how this war has become the only response – in the form of an impasse – to adolescent processes for thousands of young Iranians.