Tous les articles par Admin

Dominique Reniers, Serge Lesourd : originary fantasies and adolescent re-veiling

The concept of originary fantasy was not really theoretically developed in Freud’s work. However, these originary fantasies hold considerable interest insofar as they are an instance of the original real. Analytical literature shows that they are often confused with childhood sexual theories. Here it is a matter of grasping the particular value in what, in adolescence, is marked by the reactualization of a primordial enjoyment, that of the flesh which is outside of phallic law. Such an analysis leads to an investigation of adolescent hystericization in the two paths of sexual differentiation founded by it, which are supported precisely by an originary fantasmatic dimension oriented towards the containment for the girl, and towards the protest against the Other’s demand in the boy.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 819-841.

Olivier Ouvry, Eric Bidaud : dysmorphophobia, pubertary process and adolescent process

Dysmorphophobic fears refer to apprehensions about what a position sexually differentiated as either masculine or feminine can evoke regarding a commitment that cannot be maintained in others’ eyes. Starting with the conviction that a shameful negativity is contained within an imaginary hole in the body, the adolescent boy or girl feels excluded from social interplay and from all registers of seduction, and takes refuge in this outcast condition, thus « taking a vacation » from the trials of sexual difference. Also, the whole problematic of veiling situates the adolescent towards what we could call his « re-visagification », a necessary response to his questioning within the field of the exchange of gazes.

In this article, we will define a path which may be traced along a circle whose two ends do not come together, but which form an ascending spiral: the starting point is the real of the body, the initial evidence of the pubertary process, experiences as the Other sex (the Feminine), then the experience of shame, of dysmorphophobia, and of the creation of the aesthetic object for covering up that experience of emptiness.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 801-818.

Christian Bonnet, Stéphanie Pechikoff : adolescent romance and pubertary scenes

We suggest the notion of adolescent romance, to be understood in this way : the articulation of the structure of the family romance with pubertary scenes, as « new » scenes or composition/creations, within a dimension that is more elaborative than defensive. The adolescent romance is not a simple re-issue, but rather the creation of a desiring scenario whose movement requires three logical steps: a switching on of the structures of family romance ; then, the highlighting of pubertary scenes composed of « blazons » attached to the desiring axes ; and lastly, a narrative movement which produces this adolescent romans in the transference in the clinical exchanges. In the cases of Gunther and Celeste, the romances are analyzed, their forms as well as their functions of elaboration and of psychical construction in the service of adolescens processes. The adolescent romance, when it reveals itself in the transference, is specific and is distinguished from the Freudian family romance by the representativeness of the pubertary scenes.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 787-800.

Houari Maïdi : églantine*

The teenager is extremely sensitive to his image. This one is dreaded as much as invested with strength and fascination. In this article, we present an observation that illustrates the complex and ambivalent perceptions of a body full of diverse troubles. A body which seems to be the Pandora’s box of all the fears arisen from the childhood and from the adolescence, and a body-shop window, a narcissistic facade by the glance of the other one, but at the same time being afraid that this glance sees inside herself, its intimacy, its thoughts, its fears, where from this frequent paranoid aspect in the adolescence.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 779-785.

Nicolas Peraldi : bad son. social integration put to the test by subjectivation

The clinical account is an indirect approach whose only function is to help one get one’s bearings. Through, or more exactly, in the throughways of a trajectory wherein a young man in the care of Aide Sociale à l’Enfance, in a context of complete failure to achieve social or professional integration, I will try to show how a process of subjectivation was elaborated, allowing this youth to reconstruct his present by the yardstick of his past, to symbolize and to appropriate what had until then only been felt. This text is written as a triptych. The three parts can be read independently of one another, but it is nevertheless in the link between them that the specific nature of the argument I wish to put forth in this article will be developed. Each part refers to a reading, a phase of elaboration. It opens with a clinical vignette, a preamble to the reflection which follows. I could have connected the vignettes in a single sequence and developed my elaboration point by point afterwards. I have preferred this (dis)articulation which, in my opinion, better serves to dramatize the case in question.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 765-778.

Marion Haza : the « mystical animal ». puberty entrance and psychotherapy*

The instinct peculiar to puberty acts in the therapy, in a brutal, harsh and unsymbolized way. The acting out is generated by the emergence of new instinctual feelings, still not elaborated nor integrated to the Self. The creative ability of the adolescent, carried on by the clinician, enables to sublimate the puberty violence and find a way of clearing other than instinctual or sexual. Here, it is the « Mystical Animal » which will come and symbolize the entrance to puberty and its investments.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 747-763.

Jacques Dayan : depressiveness and depression

There is a tendency in the systemic psychiatry of mental states to consider periods of sadness or persistent discouragement in the adolescent, or even just morose states, as signs of pathology. Following the theories of D. W. Winnicott, E. Gut, P. Fédida and Ph. Gutton, we develop the dynamic viewpoint according to which the depressive movement that is inherent to mental life plays a part in the regulation of psychical life. Set in motion by loss or abandonment, it fosters the redistribution of investments, a veritable « re-affectation ». The depressed adolescent subject needs to be accompanied, not immediately treated. Although the outcome of adolescent depressiveness is usually favorable, we will examine some possible harmful outcomes, calling depression in such cases « unproductive », « death depression » or « depression of unbinding ». Two emblematic pathological figures, mental anorexia in the young girl and addictive conducts, are seen as resistances to depressiveness, which is nonetheless a key part of a process of integration. These illustrate, following the example of the dismantling of thought in psychotic depressions – desperately expressed in artistic productions – the essential role that the body plays as a constituent and a means of psychical life.

revue Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°4, pp. 737-745.

Alejandro Rojas-Urrego : just call me love and i’ll be rebaptized

The state of being in love in adolescence often takes on the form of passion and the accents of tragedy. It is also as much feared as sought after, not only as re-encounter and repetition, « republishing of old news » as Freud writes, but also as a new discovery, creative dynamism, transforming invention. Henceforth it represents a second baptism, a new birth which must sometimes disavow the first. To love is to be reborn. To undo oneself, in order to redo oneself in a better way, to recreate oneself. At the risk, of course, of losing oneself forever. The state of being in love in adolescence demands the psychoanalyst’s attention. Clinical experience sometimes confronts us with psychical breakdowns in the wake of romantic disappointments. They reveal the quality of the narcissistic foundations of the adolescent whose identity is suffering. More a reviviscence than a reminiscence. In such situations, where representations are lacking to us, literature can be a big help. It can enable us to put into words a story which has none. Using Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the author suggests several possible lines of interpretation of love in adolescence involving notion of the sexual body, narcissism, death, orgasm, name.

Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 683-705.

Philippe Gutton : transgressing or transcribing

When the author (M. Hatzfeld) speaks of the « wild vitality » that shoots up in the wake of youth, I think that it is the adolescent processes which make adolescence alive, pubertary sublimation wrongly interpreted as transgression by the social response. Creative freedom, if we conceive of it in this way, never comes alone.

Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 673-676.

Johanne Rosier : the house of Bernarda Alba : the disavowal of the feminine and the refusal of change

Frederico Garcia Lorca’s drama « The Bernarda Alba’s home » unveils the life of five girls plunged by their mother into an eight years mourning. Adela, the youngest daughter will begin a violent fight against her mother which will seal her femininity’s fate. The central question has to do with the vagaries of the bipartition of the subjectivation between continuity and change.

Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 665-671.