The author treats the question of the relation between homosexuality and the problems of sexual identity at the turning point which marks puberty. Homosexuality doesn’t entail a refusal of the designated sex in the majority of cases. The refusal of the designated sex is often accompanied by the attraction for individuals of the same biological sex but that the subject doesn’t consider as homosexual. This attraction is the consequence of his « true sex » as opposed to his biological sex. The sexual practices of female transsexuals towards males are different from those of female homosexuals ; those of male transsexuals towards females are different from those of passive male homosexuals.
At puberty, the refusal of the designated sex grows or is revealed ; it is also at puberty that homosexuality takes on a more concrete form or appears, although in both cases there are « later callings ».
The etiology of transsexualism as well as that of homosexuality is uncertain. One musn’t hasten to label homosexual an adolescent who has homosexual experiences or operate on an adolescent who expresses this desire.
Archives par mot-clé : Puberty
François Richard : a remorse of proust : contribution to the psychoanalytic theory of creation
In this article it is hypothesized that throughout Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past we find the traces of a censorship of the emergence of sexuality at puberty. Explicitly evoked in Against Sainte-Beuve, the moment of discovering the newness of puberty reappears afterwards only in a veiled way in Remembrance of Things Past. The work seeks to repair the destructive effects of this censorship and remorse through a specific aesthetic whose libidinal economy is analyzed here (in particular, the fantasy of the “ lesbian-man ”, a certain fetishism, and the permanent metaphorization of castration anxiety). A new regard can then be brought to bear on the well-known Proustian aporias about temporality.
Irène Nigolian : lili, a girl who didn’t talk
This is a clinical reflection about the formation of a personality at risk for psycho-somatization in adolescence. The reappearance of childhood soma at puberty is indicative of early distortions in the mother-baby relation and of the failure of the early Oedipal phase, which fosters somatization and the allergic object-relation in the transference. The genital body then becomes the sick body.
The psychotherapy carried out in the post-puberty period enables these to be articulated with the history of the subject and with the adolescent process which is under way.
Marika Moisseeff : the werewolf, or the regressive virtuality of the male pubertaire
Approaching the pubertaire phase from the angle of the actualization of a virtuality – being transformed into a procreator – this article establishes a link between a group of theories referring to ontogenesis and phylogenesis, on onehand, and, on the other hand, certain elements of popular imagery that show the male adolescent regressing to an anterior animal stage.
Didier Drieu : self-mutilations, traumaphilia, and trans-generational issues in adolescence
If self-mutilation shows paradoxical strategies for silencing the excitation of puberty in adolescence, it also bears witness to the traumaphilia that operates within a context of narcissistic filiation. The case of Theo shows us how important it is to recognize the bonds of interdependence between the parents and the young adolescent faced with trans-generational issues. In fact, the problematic underlying these behaviors seems only to be able to elaborated after the traumatic tensions which are the basis of the lack of differentiation and the violence in intergenerational bonds have been put into perspective.
Pascal Hachet : The Perspective of an Adolescent Reader on a Literary Text Written by Another Adolescent
The specific case of teen literary writing is a rich medium for the identification of teenage readers. Teenage writers who have continued and broadened their writing gifts in adulthood provide a constructive identification based on a successful subjectivation of the puberty process, while those who wrote only during their teens arouse a strong fascination in young readers who are inclined to deny the reality of the puberty process. Sticking by such a writer or his writings can be the sign of an effective or possibly bad mental outcome of adolescent crisis. The case of a seventeen-year-old boy, Jean-Marie, who was very fond of Rimbaud’s life and poems, is a good example of this problematic issue.
Odon Vallet : Veil and Veiling
The so-called Islamic veil is less religious than cultural in origin. The pubescent girl hides the hair on her head as she hides her body hair, because the sight of them is reserved for just one man.
Laurence Chekroun : The Evolution of a Psychotic Adolescent in Psychotherapy
Using E. and M. Laufer’s theories about adolescence and G. Haag’s theory about the normal development of babies, this article offers some reflections about the evolution of an adolescent girl in psychotherapy following a « development break » and the appearance of a delusion at the moment of puberty.
Donald L. Campbell : a pre-suicide state in a female adolescent
This paper is a contribution to psychoanalytic understanding of a suicide attempt by an adolescent girl. The suicide act is understood to be the enactment of a suicide fantasy. The paper considers the nature and function of suicide fantasy, various types of suicide fantasies, and the suicide fantasy of this particular patient. The author maintains that during the pre-suicide state the role of the father, particularly the father’s failure to claim his child for himself, or failure to present himself as a friendly rival or alternative object to the mother, plays a critical role in the mind of the patient, and will be manifest in the patient’s transference and the analyst’s counter-transference. An essential dynamic during the treatment of a pre-suicidal patient is the patient’s attempt to evoke or provoke the analyst to collude in the suicide scenario in such a way as to « sanction or to « cause » the patient’s suicide. These points will be illustrated by the presentation of case material of an adolescent girl who attempted suicide during her analysis.
Anna Cognet : an adolescent in the old days
At the end of his life, François Mauriac evokes a delusive conviction that briefly assailed him when he was about ten years old : his father, deceased when he himself was only twenty months old, would be, in reality, always alive. While leaning on the elements of the author’s life, and particularly his intimacy with the Christian faith, we propose the hypothesis that, for this young boy, puberty was the moment of a psychical trauma, likely to provoke regressive movements, without inducing the establishment of a psychotic structure. Maybe this almost pathological moment would be an attempt to compensate for the father’s lack by means of an hallucinated creation.