Adolescent school phobia is associated with an anxiety so great that the resulting inhibition becomes an obstacle to the patient’s access to a fantasy life. It is often coupled with the conduct of at-home claustration, which calls our attention to the archaic fantasy of the Claustrum developed by D. Meltzer. This is a form of intrusive projective identification that thwarts the oedipal conflict by opposing the differentiation process. We will develop these notions using a clinical case.
With puberty, the experience of time becomes conflicted and emerges from the linearity of childhood. This process is thwarted when school phobia occurs in adolescence without any warning signs. The drives seem to be as frozen just as time seems to stop. In this may be seen a search for immutability characteristic of autistic syndromes. In this case the delayed action, instead of opening the way for temporality, revives a flaw at the origins.
The author illustrates how parental resistances can lay the groundwork for the adolescent’s psychopathology. The presentation of a problematic therapeutic situation helps remind us of several principles about the treatment of families. We would suggest that school phobia be considered as post-traumatic syndrome rather than a neurotic problem, while emphasizing the burden of the parents’non-introjected infantile ideals on the development of the adolescent.
Adolescence, 2014, 32, 3, 464-479.
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