The myth of Perseus gives rise to thoughts on the psychical crossing of adolescence. The story is off to a good start with the prediction that Perseus will try to kill his grandfather. Because of this threat, Danäe is imprisoned by her father. The symbolic third party in the mother’s head makes it possible for the adolescent to bar the way to attempts at incest. Perseus’ challenge to the king and Medusa’s offering opens the way to the romantic encounter. Who can tell what the outcome will be?
Like an image in a dream, the tattoo is above all the graphic expression of the subject’s psychical production. Voluntary tattooing become a language act half-way between a writing that is close to hieroglyphics, with its symbolisms, and spoken discourse. A substituting representation, the image inscribed on the skin acquires value as an ersatz of the subject’s inner world, not necessarily metaphorized. Drive excitation is in search of representations. When these are lacking, the inscription of an image on the skin can have the status of a substitute function. Half-way between psychical representation and the external object, in an in-between neither completely outside nor completely inside. For Nicolas, his tattoo, like the shield of Perseus, reflected back the gaze of an other who could remind him of the difference of the sexes, and thus he felt protected from his fear of remaining petrified by his own projected castration anxiety. This was a meta-psychological function for fencing off the representational void he feared he would be sucked into, and for keeping his bodily ego from falling into it at the same time, reinforcing his shaky system of repression.
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