The fantasy of auto-engendering ( which takes into account and gives meaning to the appearance of mature genital sexuality) contributes to giving up the libidinal (sexualized) family investment of the oedipal type (trans-generational) in favor of a sexual investment of the homo generational type. This process of the passage from the family to the social group (of peers) is complex and calls forth varied fantasies in the form of scenes (pubertal, pedophilic, sadomasochistic…) which refer to the internal groups.The fantasy of auto-engendering, denies, at the same time, castration, the primal scene, the difference between the sexes but it develops temporarily what we call homophilia. In this context, homosexuality can be thought of as an avatar of this badly worked through homophilia. To defend this position clinical material (individual and group ) is referred to as well as initiation practices.
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Christian Seulin: modifications of the phallic symbol in adolescence
The adolescent subject is confronted with the integration of his genital sexual identity and his future adulthood among other adults. These changes do not occur without reorganization of the phallic symbol, sign of narcissistic completness with the corporal supports referring to the total body and the penis. At the same time as the evolution of the phallic symbol, a revision of the ideals which are associated with it, are being reworked. The difficulties encountered are accompanied by defensive movements, homoerotic in particular, liable to be fixated. The models of identification offered to the young subject by adults have an important influence on his future.
Claude Savinaud: having a father
One of the aspects of homosexuality in adolescence turns on the axis of the relation to the grandiose father. This alienating representations blocks the subject in a masochist submission leading to infantile auto-erotism. The newness of the arrival of puberty is thwarted in its oedipal expectations : avoidance of castration, the lessening of the symbolic image of the father in games of phallic seduction of the negative Oedipus complex. We offer the hypothesis of an impulse investment of a « maternel father », taking care of the distress of the adolescent, neglected by the mother, by seducting him.
Daniel Marcelli: primary narcissim and homosexuality in adolescence
The adolescent regularly shifts between the necessity of self identification and the need for self differentiation : homophilia is set, because of this fact, at the core of this process of adolescence, as we are first reminded. Between homophilia and the « question of homosexuality » the limit is certainly often slight, with the consultant and his patient constanly being confronted by the patient’s diverse variations of a homosexuality whether it be narcissistic, neurotic, perverse, fear of abandonment, etc.
This article focuses more precisely on the narcissistic component of homosexuality, considering the early mother infant relationship and attemps to distinguish the situation of the boy from that of the girl.
Several clinical cases are used as illustrations.
Serge Lesourd: emergency of homosexuality during aolescence: « Les gens de la mère »
In this article using a case study of female homosexuality, the author shows how adolescent homosexuality, especially female homosexuality which has puzzled psychoanalysis, can be understood as one of the normal paths leading to the encounter of bodily pleasure during the sexual act in the pubertal period. That leads one to ask questions about the effects of social discourse on the adolescent passage, and consequently on the place granted, in modern and post modern times to acted upon homosexuality and not sublimated homosexuality that Freud wrote about, as one of the possible forms of the social bond.
Colette Chiland: transexuality transexualism and homosexuality at puberty
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.
Jean Bergeret: « homosexuality or « homoerotism » in adolescence »
The notion of « homoerotism » in adolescence since Ferenczi corresponds to the passageby an intermediate stage, still narcissistic and aiming at an object represented ideally in a specular and attractive way. This stage ensures the integration of libidinal autoerotic satisfactions from the distant past and a set of later narcissistic fixations (second chilhood period and latence) at the heart of the libidinal current, truly sexual and object oriented now, which thus, should organize, and in an ideally complete and definitive way, the organizational primacy of the adult personality.
One can therefore consider that only those subjects would be entitled to a status of truly homosexual if they have benefitted from (at the most advanced moment of their affective evolution, therefore after adolescence) , the possibility of reaching a level of elaboration and overall organization of the personality both considered under the genital primacy but which following subsequent severe affective crises, would have undergone serious functional regressions, bringing them back to a mode already gone beyond, to a narcissistic relation aimed at representations of mirror likenesses.
The author then stresses three distinct varieties of homosexualis: of a functional transitory nature, that involved in the narcissistic pathology and finally that affirming a psychotic position.
Philippe Gutton : Homosexual process at puberty
After having studied the discovery of the homosexuality of Mishima in The Confession of a Masque, the author reviews the development of human sexuality in its two stages. He then distinguishes the homosexuality, at puberty, involved in the clinical process of breakdown and those he considers ordinary (or neurotic) which especially engage his writing. He questions the theory of the experienced complementarity of the sexes and studies the concept of contingency of the partial and complete object. The genital choice has less to do with the erotic than with mastery. The flexibility of pubertal transactions entwines homo and heterosexuality in such a way that the author wonders if one’s subsequent choice is determined by one’s capacity to integrate (either in a better or worse way) the sado-masochistic investments. The theory is explained by clinical examples. It takes into account the present day evolution of the ideas concerning sexual minorities
Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux : hunting parties among the greeks
In ancient Greece, the period corresponding to adolescence is conceived and institutionalized differently, depending on the sex. For boys, the most important rites of initiation involve the entry into adulthood. For girls, this moment is situated earlier and the ritual practices are supposed to correspond to a preparation for marriage. Myths highlight the difficulties and failures. Hunting accidents correspond to an inability to achieve sexual and behavorial equilibrium in some, manic crises and suicide in others. The deities in charge of overseeing these critical periods are always involved in these tragic scenarios.
Olivier Douville : adolescent-fighters in « modern » wars
Using a clinical experience with adolescent survivors of civil wars in West Africa, the author introduces a series of clinical and anthropological analyses. Refusing any attempt to liken « modern » wars to ethnic wars, he returns to the particular status of the adolescent in the conflicts, and suggests guidelines for a rereading of the dimension of fraternal war and parricide, to show how the very question of identification (as result and as structure) is here made palpable. The adolescent scene summoned up by war is also destroyed in war. This raises the question of whether a youngster can accomplish the passage of adolescence as long as the trauma remains unelaborated.