The representation of a self in adolescence is constructed through a work of limits requiring an intersubjective dimension, notably in the encounter with a boundary-object. A clinical encounter with an adolescent whose treatment has a strong sensory-motor element enables us to gauge the role of body language and the act. The role of the educator as boundary object helps put in perspective the fundamental properties of this object.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 1, 207-223.
La représentation d’un soi à l’adolescence s’élabore dans un travail des limites nécessitant une dimension intersubjective notamment dans la rencontre d’un objet-frontière. La rencontre clinique d’un adolescent sollicitant une forte dimension sensori-motrice permet de mesurer le rôle du langage du corps et de l’acte. Également, le rôle de l’éducateur comme objet-frontière permet de mettre en perspective les propriétés fondamentales liées à cet objet.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 1, 207-223.
The 2018 publication of S. Ferrières-Pestureau’sLa violence à l’œuvre (Violence at work) provides a spot-on illustration of the way that art at different times periods has taken up what exceeds the various declensions of the human body that translates its violence. The author of this article relates major events of western history to the pictorial representations that either interpreted or provoked them, noting new perceptions of violence arising from the body.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 475-482.
The concept of the difficult adolescentenables us to escape from the nosographic trap of attributing the causes of violence solely to the one who commits it. Considering the question of the bond offers the possibility for a complex critical analysis of environmental factors, especially institutional ones, that contribute to violence. By discounting the relational, institutional administrations contribute to the reification of the subject, making both the public and professionals more vulnerable. As secret accomplices to violence, institutions reap what they sow.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 439-451.
This article focuses on violent acts in the adolescent hospitalized in psychiatry, using a clinical case to discuss, on the one hand, how through the violent act and lack of symbolization, the adolescent will come to figure a pubertary impasse, inviting a hypothesis of pubertary psychosis; and on the other hand, how the clinician can open up a therapeutic perspective when faced with ruptures of the symbolic process that drive the adolescent to enact violence.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 403-422.
After more than seventy years of peace in western Europe, one may wonder what becomes of destructiveness in such unprecedented conditions. Perhaps we are witnessing what might be likened to “civil wars”: suicides, family break-ups, the policing of civilian life. After presenting two clinical vignettes, one illustrating intrafamilial wars, the other illustrating institutional wars, the author will compare these two forms and offer some considerations about the difference between individual and group passages to the act.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 343-355.
The purpose of this article is to conceptualize the phenomenon of violence using a mixed method: a review of history and literature will be brought to bear on clinical methodology. The hypothesis demonstrated is that violence dwells in the interstices between the subject and the social, and emerges from defects in the symbolic system, in the case of adolescence, crime, and “madness.” Work on violence as a responseto what remains beyond the symbolic thus strives for meaning, to prevent the violence of one from becoming the violence of all.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 325-341.
This article discusses how solutions attempted in the psychiatric treatment of adolescents hospitalized in a crisis unit can lead to an understanding of the degree and complexity of factors that contribute to the violence that is often the hallmark of this clinical field. Here as elsewhere, the adolescent is exploring different levels of containment that are nested like Russian dolls: overall containment, local containment, and individual containment.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 233-245.
The notion of violence in psychopathology has mainly to do with the amount of excitation that is unleashed. When thinking about violence in adolescence we must consider what has upset the adolescent’s economy to the point of overwhelming psychical resources. At this time of life, there is a conjunction between the sources of internal excitations and of excessive external stimulation, while investments of relations with the parents no longer have the same role in the psychical economy, hence the “trauma of adolescence”.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 225-232.
La parution en 2018 de La violence à l’œuvrede S. Ferrières-Pestureau, tombe à pic pour souligner la façon dont l’art s’est saisi à différentes époques de ce qui excède les diverses déclinaisons du corps humain qui en traduisent la violence. L’auteure s’attache ici à rapprocher les évènements majeurs de l’histoire occidentale des transformations picturales qui en furent soit les interprétations, soit les provocations, en attestant des nouvelles perceptions de la violence qui surgissent des corps.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 475-482.