The wandering of young people is an attempt to disappear, a radical way of escaping from the social restrictions of identity, of not being anyone anymore. It is essentially an urban phenomenon, since the city is highly suited to making oneself disappear into anonymity, offering a certain kind of self-protection in the form of squats, train stations, vacant lots, parks, and associations that provide temporary help with food and shelter, in addition to their own resourcefulness and inventiveness helping them to survive from one day to the next at the margins.
The polysemy of adolescent actings is rich and varied. To shed light on the unique clinical area of the adolescent act, I think it is useful to look at the contributions of the psychosomatic, particularly at the harmful effects of the loss of a rich inner dynamic in favor of or as a counterpoint to an explosion of externalized conducts. We will end by offering some ideas about the paradox of disruptiveness in the context of adolescent essential depression, where impulsiveness co-exists with wandering.
The author studies the nature of the therapist’s engagement, more precisely his counter-transference when faced with the treatment of trauma. The example of Agathe is presented; her treatment takes place in the particularly tragic atmosphere of Rwanda.
The life of Arthur Rimbaud is mapped by his poetry and correspondence, but also his solitary wanderings and disorderly conduct and behavior in search of an ever-absent and missed Father.
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