DI ROCCO VINCENT : « I DON’T WANT TO DIE BEFORE I’VE TASTED THE SWEETNESS OF DEATH. . . »

Beginning from an unusual clinical experience composed of fragments of improbable encounters with an adolescent going through a period marked by high-risk behaviour in a violent context before becoming an « extreme ski » professional ; I propose to study the question of death at adolescence… not as a reflection on loss and grievance, but as an essential figure of the unrepresentable which organizes high-risk behaviour during adolescence. With this approach, death reunites inevitable and random figures while confronting what is unrepresentable of one’s own death. Thus, we have a different reading of the classical approach to risk-taking, which commonly refers to the idea of ordealistic, high-risk behaviour as a narcissistic trial. Another approach considers risk-taking as an attempt to represent an intimate relationship with death and what is unrepresentable of one’s own death. This dynamic takes form in what may be called an instantaneous clinical moment, where what is experienced during the act cannot be resolved through the realization of the act itself. It is in fact the question of a chaotic attempt to express, by feeling, an experience which remains errant.