The author refers to The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka as a transformation narrative, the story of puberty transformations in which the emergence of genital sexuality, the subjection of the body to the biological, and the permanence of infantile sexuality are combined. Usually, the fantasy of self-engenderment helps to connect these different constraints. The failure of this connection causes adolescents to feel that they have an uncontrollable and threatening body that must be kept confined.
This issue of Adolescence actually serves as an occasion for a discreet renewal of thinking about the conditions in which adolescents and psychoanalysts encounter each other. The street is the signifier now chosen to reflect on the adjustment of settings to cultural developments. In addition, the street is not only a place where an opening of the familial enclosure happens: the theme of the treatment. It is also a space-time of subjectivation “ among peers ”, governed by “ peer group law ”.
Michael Jackson is a figure of eternal adolescence, replaying a painful and inaccessible process of individuation. His metamorphoses echo the psychical and physical transformations of pubescent youngsters. His myth, shot through with genealogical ruptures, evokes a character in the throes of a powerful desire for self-engenderment. His polymorphism maximizes the possibilities for adolescent identification and his media-genic quality helps him to be appropriated as a social demand. His ability to incarnate omnipotence makes him a likely support for projection, as he echoes the narcissistic desires of young people.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 979-993.
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