Through the exploration of a clinical case, this article will discuss what is at stake in the process of subjectivation in the adolescent, and also the obstacles that stand in the way of the process. The adolescent, confronted with internal and external otherness, tries to ensure the continuity of his identity even as he is undergoing transformation. We will show how the therapeutic encounter, as a transitional space, can foster the play of identifications and the gradual uniting of the of the split-off parts of the personality that is undergoing subjectivation.
I will discuss the treatment of two adolescents presenting a heightened oedipal crisis linked to early disturbances in the relation with the primal object, and for whom the use of pornographic representations and practices is a defense against the traumatic threat of incestuous attraction to the mother and against the genital relation, which brings issues of the relation with another person. This regressive, defensive sexuality touches many adolescents to different degrees at the onset of the crisis of adolescence.
The interest of using the haiku form in a writing workshop for borderline adolescents in a psychiatric hospital will be studied through the writings of an adolescent girl. The rhythm and brevity required by the haiku leads the girl to fully inscribe the cry of a memory of an absence, to write what is still missing from spoken words. The omnipresence of line breaks in this type of poem and the splitting at work in the moment of writing will then enable the inscription of her psychic pain.
This article is a continuation of the book The Current Malaise in Culture: the split between the civilized current and aggression against culture feeds into a disavowal of the destructiveness at work in group psychology and even in critical thought – so that judgment is suspended. The superego is weakened, then perverted. Radical Islamism is a typical form of sadistic, paranoiac superego, much more than a result of fragile narcissistic identity.
The process of adolescence involves readjustments of identity and identification necessitating work of psychization that is indispensable in ensuring a feeling of continuity. Its failure puts the subject at risk of being dominated by the “de-objectalizing function” of his psychical economy, thus preventing any living form of creativity and expression. The work of analysis may then proceed by way of the sensorial, using the displacement in the transference of unassimilated sensorial impressions, coming very close to the “body of the ineffable”, between impasse and creativity.
This paper concerns clinical work with sexual aggression experienced in adolescence, in the fright and bewilderment after the violation. We first revisit the issue of the revival specific to post-traumatic repetition of trauma, hypothesizing the existence of a traumatic latency period when the prevailing traumatic process would suspend the subject’s work of readjustment, bonding, and symbolization. Can such aggressions and their fixed yet active psychic aftermath, characterized by the return of the identical, be joined with registers of fantasy proper to adolescence and to the transformation of the body in puberty? Or are we dealing with two internal foreign bodies, opening on their own and attacking the subject when the latter is caught between a rock and a hard place?
The understanding of the clinical and therapeutical approach of severe behaviour disorders in terms of rape and murder with some adolescents is here studied from the point of view of projective techniques. The specificity of T.A.T. protocoles shows the temporary efficiency of splitting at work with such adolescents but also its failure when the representation of object‑loss is appealed to, hence summoning up a huge abandonment and annihilation anxiety which will entail drive defusion. The tonality of an internal lethal void is hence unfolded within a narcissism constantly threatened by being broken down into pieces.
The understanding of the clinical and therapeutical approach of severe behaviour disorders in terms of rape and murder with some adolescents is here studied from the point of view of projective techniques. The specificity of T.A.T. protocoles shows the temporary efficiency of splitting at work with such adolescents but also its failure when the representation of object-loss is appealed to, hence summoning up a huge abandonment and annihilation anxiety which will entail drive defusion. The tonality of an internal lethal void is hence unfolded within a narcissism constantly threatened by being broken down into pieces.
Adolescence, with its pubertaire and subjectivation processes, is an especially delicate moment when primary traumas are revisited as deferred action. In cases where these conflicts have remained on the margins of representation and have generated psychical defenses along the lines of splitting, the processes of puberty will lead to a return of what has been split off ; where repression has occurred, they will lead to a return of what has been repressed. In both cases, the risk is that what returns will be an unbound destructiveness, paving the way for drive disintrication, or even the “ de-driving ” of the drive, so that it turns into instinct, with the risk of somatic disorganization.
Collective pornographic exhibitionism has today taken the place of the individual exhibitionism of yesteryear and offers a new kind of challenge. We are actually witnessing an invasion of images inspired by X-rated films reaching more and more children and adolescents : while their passage to adulthood presupposes an imaginary elaboration wherein modesty holds a crucial place, these exhibitions risk short-circuiting the courses of desire. The author shows how this confrontation has in a few years become a new test of initiation for youngsters, the main one as far as sexual matters are concerned. He highlights the difficulties this leads to and draws from his knowledge of exhibitionism some guides for the most helpless. Rather than taking refuge in total suppression, which would only intensify the phenomenon, he suggests we take stock of our collective responsibility and reconsider our conception of sexuality in light of human creativity.
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