Stéphane Bourcet, Camille Rossi : the hypochondriac complaint in adolescence

Hypochondriac complaints, frequent during adolescence, are a request directed at another and address an object of love and/or hatred. The adolescent is complaining about the traumatic breaking-in of puberty and seeking the witness of others. Hypochondriac complaints are carriers of a massive narcissistic investment. The organ about which the adolescent complains condenses the whole of the traumatized body through genitalization. The body, centered by its multiple complaints, is a place of projection, crystallizing in the body mass all thought, which then becomes meaningless. The hypochondriac adolescent, prompted by a very active underground fantasy of immortality, seems to substitute the time-space dimension of disease for the time and space of human existence ending in death.