Generally speaking, the onset of the pubertary dynamic signals the end of the latency phase. But what happens in the case of cancer if treatments have a desexualizing effect on the patient? By means of clinical experiences and interviews in a hospital ward for adolescents and young adults, the authors of this article explore the effects of serious illness on ways of emerging from the latency phase and the start of genital reorganization.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 3, 539-549.
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.