Considering the signifying value of symbols called up by adolescents’ self-inflicted wounds, their anthropological function gives access to something that, behind the purification and sacrifice, pertains to loss. In adolescence, de-filiating movements can be caught up in anxiety of Nothingness, in which loss and abandonment are joined. By representing these on the clinical stage through injuries, the acted entreaty allies itself with control to produce catharsis.

Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 345-360.