This article aims to articulate two theoretical and complementary approaches to adolescence: fantasy and its recasting on the one hand, and the adolescent “ sinthome ” on the other hand. We’ll start off with the concept of the “ sinthome ” in J. Lacan’s theory and its specific use in the logical moment of adolescence. Then we’ll consider what we have named “ the recasting of adolescence ”. It is indeed a conception of adolescence fantasy (the specificity of the rhomboid – which Lacan calls the “ awl ” – in the matheme) which will enable us to find the primary foundations of the construction of the “ sinthome ”. By showing how close the function of the “ sinthome ” is to that of fantasy, this theory leads into new avenues regarding the psychopathology of the adolescent and, moreover, into the direction his treatment should take.
On the one hand, institutions for adolescents accept all sorts of demands; on the other hand, the extension of delinquency has the effect of socializing crime. Consequently, the therapist may accept situations at the crossroads where the penal, the clinical and the social meet, as in the case of a young criminal we received. There is a jarring of usual clinical practice, as the practitioner must be able to cope with the possibility of recidivism. We give an account of the clinical perspective adopted in this case, one which emphasized fantasy rather than drives, and which seemed to us a more honest way of accepting our social responsibility. Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 945-956.
The author goes back to the distinction D. W. Winnicott made between three forms of representational activity (daydreaming, dreaming and imagining) and shows that this distinction helps to establish a typology of ways of playing video games. These three ways of gaming differ both in the way objects shown on a screen are invested and in the way the gamer relates to his internal objects. This model breaks with that of addiction while laying the groundwork for a clinical and therapeutic approach to different categories of video game players.
Michael Jackson’s life was akin to a long one man show that ended when he was barely fifty years old. What did the adolescence of the star represent, for himself first of all ? Indeed, the physical transformations of puberty will for him generate massive anxieties, causing virulent and repeated attacks against his own body, finally leading to a genuine destruction of his physical appearance. His inability to accept these inherent elements of puberty were nevertheless counterbalanced by the sublimatory value of his artistic creativity. Thus the moonwalk, the artist’s true signature, an acted and performed expression, may be the translation of fantasy scenario closely tied to the trauma of puberty and maternal castration. Recourse to a phenomenon of « extimization » of internal reality could thus have manage to produce a sublimated actualization of fantasies transformed in the fire of his esthetic creation.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 1005-1030.
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