The addiction object is presented as a psychical operator of subjective experience. The logic of addiction functions against a background of trauma. Through the rhythm, the cadence, of substance use, the early dysrhythmias that cause feelings of impingement can be regulated. In the psychic configurations presented here, addiction is not merely a quest for pleasure; it is positioned as a regulator of sensorial and drive activity.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 1, 153-165.
The unprecedentedness of the Covid pandemic helped to we psychic resistances, often revealing traumatic experiences that had been hidden until now. In this context, the traumatic experience has been called forth by three factors: the effect of the lockdowns, the omnipresence of digital technology, lastly the general use of remote consultations in mental health care. We will discuss this multiple calling forth of the traumatic in light of what is understood about the adolescent process.
Adolescence, 2022, 40, 1, 193-204.
The lockdowns due to Covid-19 led to a sharp increase in hospitalizations of adolescents for severe anorexia. Though the clinical profile was typical, the investment of hospitalization and treatment was quite unusual. The investment of a space of one’s own enabled a resumption of boundary-work, restoring the differentiation between fantasy and reality, allowing a process of subjectal appropriation to resume, and putting at a distance the traumatic invasion and the oral regression provoked by the pandemic.
Adolescence, 2022, 40, 1, 175-192.
This article looks at failures that can occur in the multidisciplinary treatment of the subject. To protect themselves from the hard-to-tolerate affects that these subjects make them feel, professionals who are responsible for supporting them tend to reorient them towards others. This action, which is supposed to be therapeutic, increases the subject’s feeling of being abandoned and thus the violence of his or her attitudes. This will be illustrated by a clinical example.
Adolescence, 2021, 39, 2, 299-312.
Man has dreamed of mastering his psychic, ecological and virtual environment, through a frantic race against any form of limit, whether of time, of space, of resources or of the body. The current situation undermines the narrative of man as center of the universe, as he is forced to acknowledge that he is peripheral in relation to what he presumed to dominate. Would the parental generation thus be paying tribute to adolescents for saving them from humiliation? How, then, can one inhabit one’s body and psyche, if the promised future is the end screen?
Adolescence, 2021, 39, 1, 167-186.
This article presents the beginnings of the treatment of an adolescent who has experienced early trauma. The disconuity reestablished from the very start of treatment by repeated absences will bring the analyst face to face with the primary object relations. Constant disruption of, or even attacks on, the setting will have to be constructed around the patient’s psychic possibilities.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 1, 45-52.
Si la adopción durante la adolescencia ocurre sin dificultades mayores, existen situaciones en que el choque entre los aspectos traumáticos vinculados al pasado del niño y su reactivación a la adolescencia y la vulnerabilidad de los padres impiden toda afiliación, todo injerto. El autor ha llamado estas situaciones de gran sufrimiento individual y familiar estados de supervivencia en referencia a los escritos de J. Altounian.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 743-752.
abandonment, the necessary prelude to adoption, is here conceived of as the first step that enables filiation. The adoptive child must himself abandon his birth parents in order to adopt his new parents. This reappropriation of abandonment is made inevitable by the subjectivation of adolescence. It requires that one get past the real trauma of rejection in order to inscribe it as the structuring trauma of the loss and the gift. It affects every subject when he or she re-establishes filiation in adolescence.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 773-783.
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.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 743-752.
Si l’adoption à l’adolescence se passe souvent sans de graves écueils, il existe néanmoins des situations où la collusion entre les aspects traumatiques liés au passé de l’enfant et sa réactivation à l’adolescence, et la vulnérabilité des parents, empêchent toute affiliation, toute greffe. L’auteur a appelé ces situations de grande détresse individuelle et familiale, états de survivance, en référence aux écrits de J. Altounian.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 4, 743-752.