Over the past decade some French adolescents have identified with the violent ideology promoted by ISIS and have forged ties with some of its members. As a consequence of this, some are in psychotherapy as part of a court-ordered treatment. Using the treatment of five of these adolescents, we suggest that this identification be considered as possibly representing a “radical solution” to the terror of always feeling attacked.
Adolescence, 2022, 40, 1, 147-159.
This text shows how a psychoanalyst in Paris hears the way that young people, boys and girls, are seduced by the appeal of jihad. These young people are not fanatics. They are consulting a psychoanalyst on the advice of friends or family members. The author describes the significant identity issues and psychological wounds of these young people, but also their ideals and hopes.
Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 291-303.
“Radicalization” emerges in parents’discourse as a reason for seeking consultation for their children. In three clinical situations, it appears as a form of mediation used by adolescents to separate themselves from their parents and fill up a void in the transgenerational. “Traumatic racial mixing” is discussed as a factor in the identity process. The aim of this article is to understand the meaning of these radical engagements with the context of separation and individuation.
Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 263-274.
Significant and longterm contact with incarcerated female patients who have been “radicalized” leads to a hypothesis that espousing jihadist ideology may be the only way for these young women to bandage the wounds of an accident-filled family history. Once enthralled by this idealist dogma, they seem dispossessed of their thought activity and of the very essence of their subjectivity, to the point where they fuse with the sacred ideal and the radical doctrine.
Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 243-252.