This article, focusing on the issue of the adolescens process held prisoner by the bellicose mentality secreted by/secreting war, argues that the reversal of values inherent to this mentality imply deep splits between parts, especially adult and infantile, and masculine and feminine. Splitting which, as the cases of Marcel and Roch illustrate, sacrifice the the young warrior’s adolescens process upon the phallic altar.
The author pinpoints the weapon, the enemy, and the uniform as signs and basic ingredients both of Mars’ craft and of the bellicose mentality. He envisions the work of separating from the bellicose mentality in relation to the passage from weapon to tool : a passage which opens onto the values of strength, creativity and beauty that war has replaced with horror and violence – a reversal of values. For Roch and Marcel, the re-establishment of these values, corresponding to the transformation of terrors into narratives, dreams and fantasies, occurs through their experimentation of an adolescence that has been petrified until now.