Though adoption in adolescence often happens without serious problems, there are nevertheless situations where the collusion between traumatic aspects linked to the child’s past and its reactivation in adolescence, and the vulnerability of the parents, prevent any affiliation or grafting. The author has called these situations of great individual and familial distress “survival states” in reference to the writings of J. Altounian.
In adolescence the body becomes a projection surface that one must control by adorning it, concealing it, abusing it, etc. Existence is a matter of skin, a question of the frontier between inside and outside. Cutting into the body brings suffering to the surface of oneself, where it becomes visible and controllable; it is much more an act of passage than a passage to the act
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