This article talks about the relation between the primal mirror experience and the establishment of self/other limits. A discussion of a clinical case will enable us to appreciate the importance of the other’s gaze as a necessary precondition for the deployment of the process of subjectivation and the construction of a double limit: inside-outside and unconscious-preconscious-conscious.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 1, 135-138.
Here we will try to posit the relationships between vision, thought, spoken or “ signed ” languages and narcissism in adolescence, such as they are revealed by deaf-muteness. For any deaf person, vision is the object of an over-investment that is both saving and problematic. Its importance need not be stressed, but its preponderance raises some questions. The theory of the “ visual envelope of the ego ” enables us to posit the theoretical issues, and some excerpts from the psychotherapy of a hearing-impaired adolescent bear witness to the clinical issues : narcissistic suffering and the suffering of the thought process.