Following the collapse of revolutionary utopias, Iranian adolescents develop through their active role as voluntary enlistees in the Iran-Iraq war a “ culture of death ”, wherein the quest for the identity of martyr takes the place of a process of subjectivation.
Fundamentalist Islamic ideology and war fanaticism induce behaviors of narcissistic withdrawal, which prevent these youths from attaining the dimension of adult sexuality and going on from there to appropriate a discourse for themselves within a repressive society.
Through the clinical case of a former adolescent soldier, this article tries to show how this war has become the only response – in the form of an impasse – to adolescent processes for thousands of young Iranians.
Archives par mot-clé : Sexuality
Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux : hunting parties among the greeks
In ancient Greece, the period corresponding to adolescence is conceived and institutionalized differently, depending on the sex. For boys, the most important rites of initiation involve the entry into adulthood. For girls, this moment is situated earlier and the ritual practices are supposed to correspond to a preparation for marriage. Myths highlight the difficulties and failures. Hunting accidents correspond to an inability to achieve sexual and behavorial equilibrium in some, manic crises and suicide in others. The deities in charge of overseeing these critical periods are always involved in these tragic scenarios.
Marika Moisseeff : monsters as a symbol of horrific motherhood,or female initiation for the use of adolescents
Adolescent sexuality has become an overriding concern : it seems essential, these days, to guard against its unfortunate consequences, the foremost of which is pregnancy. At the same time, motherhood and adolescents’metamorphosis into virtual procreators are among the favorite subjects of American television series aimed at this age group. The feminine reproductive function is presented in these series as a potentially deadly, parsitic phenomenon, a demonic force that threatens humanity. The redeeming hero is a female and the path she follows is comparable to an initiation
Serge Lesourd : the feminine in adolescence : the making of a place
Based on the results of an adolescent girl’s treatment, the author discusses a major discovery made at the time of adolescence, i.e. the discovery of femininity as such, unknown until then to the subject, whether boy or girl. This “ femininity as such ” is construed by the subject as separate from the sexual being he considered himself as a child. Sexuality rests on phallic primacy which limits relations with others. At puberty, the adolescent will refuse this phallic primacy as a regulating agent of ifs relationship with the outside world, as a limit to sexuality, as a boundary to enjoyment. This “ beyond ” of the phallic dimension, femininity as such, which is a type of enjoyment not fully marked by the phallic limit, must pass through unconscious logic, to allow the emergence of an heterosexual love relationship. The encounter with THE difference, one which embodies all differences, is difficult for adolescents. This detour through femininity, which is a necessary disruption, can also be the cause of serious social and psychic disruptions in adolescents.
Catherine Chabert : does the Oedipus complex still exist ?
The author observes that in Freud’s work the Oedipus complex is omnipresent but rarely theorized as such; she asks whether the Oedipus complex is characteristic of neuroses or if it also occurs in narcissistic and borderline functioning. The case history of an adolescent girl shows that dependence and prevalence of the narcissistic relationship with the mother may mask a paradoxical but strong relationship with the father. Returning to Freud’s writings (Three Essays, The Ego and the Id), Chabert seeks connections between the Oedipus complex and objectal loss-anxiety, and even more, a consubtantiality of loss and the sexual, which is the central idea of Mourning and Melancholy.
Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°1, pp. 65-79.
Julien Léon : dead father and imaginary father in the reappearance of the oedipus complex in an adolescent
In adolescence, the natural deposition of the imaginary father helps to rearrange Oedipal fixations and get beyond infantile sexuality. Here the author will try to show how difficult this is when the figure of the imaginary father corresponds with an idealized dead father. The therapy will then have to provide the adolescent with the possibility of elaborating the transference so that he can escape from the pervading presence of the imaginary father, a crucial step for the developing subject.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°2, pp. 409-416.