The author leads a group therapy for patients between thirteen and eighteen years old hospitalized for severe mental anorexia. The group provides an exceptional vantage point for observing this radical form of adolescent disorder and the traumatic effects of puberty’s eruption in subjects whose narcissistic foundations are shaky. It shows the this type of patient can benefit therapeutically from a group speaking space inspired by psychoanalysis and framed and supported by therapists.
Using two brief clinical vignettes showing two young adults – one who never presented any troubling signs in childhood, the other treated for psychotic symptoms – the author will look retroactively at the twists and turns of the adolescent process and the role that this psychic experience may or may not have played in the evolution of their lives. Is it possible that this psychic experience of adolescence is not accessible to everyone?
How did Freud become Freud? Studying Freud étudiant (Freud the student), this article examines a previously unseen portrait of psychoanalysis’ founder, unearthed by meticulous biographical research that is constantly alert to the adolescent underneath the psychoanalyst. A discussion of the results of this “biographical challenge,” which traces within Freud the adolescent who came before him, raises the question: “is the adolescence ofFreud truly enough to explain adolescence forFreud?
Gender incongruity in the adolescent is currently drowned out by all the questions that have arisen about gender dysphoria in general. Psychoanalytical studies on this topic are rare. Therefore, after a brief presentation of current work on gender incongruity in the adolescent, the author will investigate the psychodynamic aspects of this phenomenon using excerpts from consultations and psychoanalytic reflections on gender and adolescence.
The relationship between Freud and Ferenczi has been the subject of much study, especially since the beginning of the movement to rehabilitate the latter’s writings. But there is little about the place of adolescence in their connection with each other, despite the diagnosis of a “third puberty” Freud rendered at the end of their relationship. This article will explore their exchanges to show how, in a climate of intense ambivalence, the attitude of each man echoed conflicts of his adolescence.
Few studies in the field of autism up till now have attempted to describe how the adolescent process acts on its subjects. In this article, we offer a reading of some fundamental concepts about adolescence from the work of Freud and Philippe Gutton in light of knowledge about autism based on the works of G. Haag, R. Roussillon, D. Meltzer, M. Rhode et D. Anzieu that help understand archaic functioning.
Adolescence is a second birth, with all the traumatic echoes it induces in the parents. The onset of puberty, occurring earlier and earlier in our times, is a crucial moment for analytical treatment when there is a risk of psychosis. The second phase, the symbolic birth into adulthood, should be a time for integrating acting out, masturbation, and boundaries, within an identity open to love thanks to the mourning of childhood and Oedipal objects.
In the context of grave illness, the specific qualities of the work of ordinary adolescence are tinted with problems inherent to the sick body, especially the control of the biological dimension and its lethalness. Two recent novels help us to understand how the resulting psychical and fantasy configurations infiltrate pubertary reorganizations in which appear issues of the sexual, sexuality, and romantic love in adolescence.
Through the study of the cases of two deaf patients, this article will offer some thoughts on the subjectivation of the handicap in adolescence. This process seems to be closely tied to the ability of the patient’s environment to welcome his or her desire for autonomy and otherness, and to enable encounters with new love objects and with peers. This necessary pre-condition helps the patient to move from a body that may need rehabilitation to a desiring body and to integrate the handicap as part of his or her being and history.
Although J. Lacan rarely discussed the theme of adolescence as such, his analysis of the Dora case, can allow us to underscore three characteristics of the adolescent process: the traumatic impact of the encounter with the desire of the Other, the attempt to cover up the sexual with knowledge and the quest for a stable position towards sex identification. The revealing of the inadequacy of knowledge during adolescence refers us to the structural incompleteness of the symbolic and to a part of the real that the symbolic cannot absorb.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 2, 319-331.
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