The tendency to retreat within the family space is a manifest tendency in adolescence. The end of childhood behind, with its “disbelief” in the parents, is marked by a hostile retreat into the enclosure of “his” room, at least until the sudden act of de-confinement takes place. The name of Alexis, one of the earliest saints, deserves to be given to a “complex” that provides a clinical paradigm: the saint finds a way to secretly infiltrate the father’s house incognito and lead a double life there, after having sought a wholesome Elsewhere outside of his family’s ideals. How can one not see in this a major fantasy of adolescence, one that is confirmed by Kafka’s Metamorphosis? It is troubling to find this reduced to a syndrome outside time and culture in the phenomenon of Hikikomori – the “self-sequestration” of Japanese adolescents – when it sheds light on the unconscious drama reconstituted here.
The camera of Abdellatif Kechiche reveals the body in the throes of the drives and the metamorphosis of Psyche. Through the story of the young Adele, from adolescence to adulthood, the film raises the question of adolescent sexuality, the choice of love object, femininity and homosexuality.
This article shows the importance of anality in the appearance, disappearance and transformations of obesity in adolescence. For Danielle, a fantasy of fecalization of the Body-ego seriously mars adolescent narcissism and Ego ideal, and prevents anality from being properly integrated into the feminine Ego. For Camille, it is the opposite: a minimal fantasy sphincterization of the Ego enables a well-tempered way out of obesity and melancholy formlessness.
Based on the notions of « body image « (P. Schilder) and of « pathosformel « (A. Warburg), this study proposes to revisit Boticelli’s pictorial work from the point of view of adolescent perception, as an idealized fiction resting upon threefold suffering : the inaccessible quest for purity, the dimension of manic excess in relation to future time, and the nostalgic disappearance of the time of childhood that is irremediably gone. The method used is that of « interactions of psychoanalysis «, that is, not the use of psychoanalytical method to decipher the model, but rather the placement of artwork’s sensitive listening into tension, or into resonance, with psychoanalytic treatment, in this case that of adolescence.
Approaching the pubertaire phase from the angle of the actualization of a virtuality – being transformed into a procreator – this article establishes a link between a group of theories referring to ontogenesis and phylogenesis, on onehand, and, on the other hand, certain elements of popular imagery that show the male adolescent regressing to an anterior animal stage.
Following the 1955 publication of Nabokov’s novel, “ physically attractive, flirtatious young girls giving the impression of ingenuous naïveté ” (Petit Robert dictionary) are indifferently designated by the terms lolita or nymphet : potential women whose bodies have yet to undergo the upheavals associated with motherhood. A nymph also designates the chrysalis of certain insects whose larvae, while undergoing a transformation into a reproductive creature, conserves its juvenile characteristics. What might be the meaning of this connection between prepubescent “ innocent ” femininity and an inferior animal such as an insect ? The analysis of certain works of science fiction may provide the key.
Metamorphosis establishes a paradoxical contradiction between originality and program, « hazard and necessity », disorder and order, difference and similarity, subject and subjection, making possible a reflection between sublimation and control. Also paradoxical is its happening in time, for the illusion of the pubertaire is creative insofar as there is oscillation between it and disillusion. Repeat R. Kaës’ fundamental adage whose paradoxical character cannot be missed : « The subject is first of all an inter-subject », the pubertary metamorphosis is in an exemplary way that of the inter-subject : it includes the other in its very procedure. There is no solitary structural change. The pubertaire is not a (re)finding of the object but a revelation of genital alterity
The « metamorphic contract » is singularly enlarged when it connotes the ongoing creation of a bond between subject and society, individual and group, singular discourse and cultural referent.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 171-189.
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