Archives de catégorie : ENG – Nouages – 2002 T.20 n° 1

Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux : hunting parties among the greeks

In ancient Greece, the period corresponding to adolescence is conceived and institutionalized differently, depending on the sex. For boys, the most important rites of initiation involve the entry into adulthood. For girls, this moment is situated earlier and the ritual practices are supposed to correspond to a preparation for marriage. Myths highlight the difficulties and failures. Hunting accidents correspond to an inability to achieve sexual and behavorial equilibrium in some, manic crises and suicide in others. The deities in charge of overseeing these critical periods are always involved in these tragic scenarios.

Olivier Douville : adolescent-fighters in « modern » wars

Using a clinical experience with adolescent survivors of civil wars in West Africa, the author introduces a series of clinical and anthropological analyses. Refusing any attempt to liken « modern » wars to ethnic wars, he returns to the particular status of the adolescent in the conflicts, and suggests guidelines for a rereading of the dimension of fraternal war and parricide, to show how the very question of identification (as result and as structure) is here made palpable. The adolescent scene summoned up by war is also destroyed in war. This raises the question of whether a youngster can accomplish the passage of adolescence as long as the trauma remains unelaborated.

Jean-François Rabain : fraternal bonds, rivalry and narcissism of small differences

Freud has left us a theory of fraternal rivalry from his self-analysis. For him, the fraternal is the paternal displaced. Conflicts born of fraternal rivalries are related to the Oedipus complex. Lacan has shown how jealousy between brothers and the conflicts of rivalry have as much to do with a mental identification as with a vital rivalry. The rival plays, in effect, the role of an identificatory image that allows the subject to be constituted. The question of narcissism, particularly the narcissism of small differences, appears as central. How do small differences call into question the ideal ego of the group and the ideal passed on from generation to generation? How can the origin be shared? These are the questions that this article proposes to examine in discussing the works of a number of authors, in particular those of Gilbert Diatkine and Daniel Sibony.

Boris Cyrulnik : attachments and prohibitions

For Freud, infantile sexuality is the glue which binds the child to its parents. Many conflicts have been rooted in such a sexual relationship.
Attachment theory distinguishes between the sexual dynamic and the attachment dynamic.
This point of view is supported by recent ethnological evidence suggesting that attachment and sexuality are linked to the « International Working Model ».
It is mainly when attachment is insecure that sexuality is likely to develop in an unfortunate way*.*.

Eléana Mylona : the use of « tu » and « vous » : the « one » becomes « several »

Using the analytical treatment of Sabrina, with reference to the Oedipal model and the notion of the plurality of aspects of the subject, the authors attempt to show the binding that language accomplishes during psychical organization in adolescence, in order to suggest the operational and functional aspect of the adolescent’s narrative. This rational narrative is defensive, both against infantile sexuality and against the disintrication of the drives, while allowing the adolescent to regain access to negation and judgment of truth as he acquires a certain degree of independence from the pleasure principle and also from repression.
This proposal will be supported by the passage from the use of « tu » to the use of « vous » in adolescence : the moment when « one » becomes « several ».

Denis Lafortune : « aimed for the black one, killed the white one », false allegations of incest from the perspective of intergenerational transmissions

A substantial number of sexual abuse allegations proves to be false when the investigation is concluded. Close to 35% of the allegations carried in a family or almost family context (that is to say the step-families) are judged ungrounded. This article is dedicated to the allegations of a fifteen year teenager that will prove to be false as for the gestures assigned to the father, but nevertheless revealing of some family truths. From this disturbing clinical situation, we will propose some reflections about the truth to the sense of sincerity, the truth to the sense of probability, reality testing, intergenerational transmissions and acting-out as critical moment for the activity of representation, not only of the teenager but also of her parents*.*.

Gianluigi Monniello : destinies of violence in an outpatient hospital

In an outpatient hospital, the destinies of violence and its different manifestations depend on the support offered by the therapist, the group of caregivers and the containing institutional setting, which can provide models for symbolization.
The detailed description of the treatment of Ennio, a violent adolescent, give an illustration of the primary therapeutic aim, which is the interiorization of the containing function of the outpatient hospital, considered as a transferential community where tranferences are deployed in an inter-subjective dimension.

Olivier Ouvry : the « we » and the appearance of the subject

Starting with the question of adolescent subjects’ engagement in psychotherapeutic work, we will investigate the passage from preliminary interviews to those wherein effective work is done, through two dialectical points: the intervention of a third instance in the apparent duality of the psychotherapeutic interview, and the passage from « one » to « we » in the patient’s language, grammatically careless, but which we have found to signify the appearance of the subject.