This article will examine the concept of the digital ordeal to better understand the online dissemination of digital videos and photos. Laying their cards on the table by publishing images in which they are recognizable, some adolescents compromise their identity under the gaze of the community of anonymous internauts, thus reactivating the anthropology of risk-taking within conditions specific to the Web 2.0
Adolescence, 2015, 33, 3, 649-654.
Can today’s adolescent choose not to immerse himself in his body and the bodies of others, if he wants to feel he exists and to be recognized? In the 21st century, the hypermodern adolescent must run the risk of incarnating several bodies, in order to confront the necessity of constructing his own existence, which may endanger his identity.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 2, 283-293.
Interviews, first semi-directive, afterwards freeform, with subjects using gay dating sites have allowed us to pinpoint a certain number of particularities of types of unconscious dares, involving both their own fantasy life and their family history, concomitant with risk-taking that led to infection with the AIDS virus. These interviews also allowed some subjects who participated in them a better perception of their vital choices, and an opportunity to put into perspective the conclusions that partly determined their risk-taking.
The « truck jumping game » is one of the most troubling scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange. The title of this film, which came out in the 1960’s, is itself intriguing. Today A Clockwork Orange is no less than what it was in 1969: a strangely modern reflection of a dystopia of humankind. Better yet, A Clockwork Orange turns out to be more relevant than ever. We see in it that psychical malaise which is uncontained and finds only the city streets in which to, not say, but show and act the impasses in which the subject is trapped.
The spectacle of this film, and more especially, one its scenes, « the truck jumping game » allows us to see that the notion of risk, from the Greek Rizikon, helps to widen even more the metapsychological analysis of the phenomenon of addiction. The Risk-taker, or the « riskers », would be those who best illustrate the Freudian definition of drive. This recovery of tension is, we argue here, worth much more than the assuaging of tension, at least for those subjects who place themselves in a position of dependence that is as harmful as it is indispensable to the maintenance of a vital homeostasis.
Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 487-495.
The author, following Michel Foucault, describes how the art of governing presupposes the interests of the State are more and more imposed on the populace in the management of existences and private matters. To do this, Power sets up security systems by manipulating public opinion and making a tool of the sciences. “Experts” become the scribes of these new market economy servitudes, which gently and insidiously standardize individuals and populations. Medicine, psychiatry and psychology are, in this article, considered as social practices and the author shows that the re-composition of their knowledge and practices has more to do with an ideological position than with a scientific one.
Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 271-295.
In the daily life of children and adolescents, particular conducts may be noted : asphyxiation « games », aggression « games » and death « games ». In light of my regular experience with young people involved in these kinds of conducts, I propose some ideas about the processes at work. In the first part I will present these different « games » and the way they are frequently confused with other kinds of activity ; then I will describe the effect on thought processes and the object relation they imply.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°2, pp. 305-315.