Like an image in a dream, the tattoo is above all the graphic expression of the subject’s psychical production. Voluntary tattooing become a language act half-way between a writing that is close to hieroglyphics, with its symbolisms, and spoken discourse. A substituting representation, the image inscribed on the skin acquires value as an ersatz of the subject’s inner world, not necessarily metaphorized. Drive excitation is in search of representations. When these are lacking, the inscription of an image on the skin can have the status of a substitute function. Half-way between psychical representation and the external object, in an in-between neither completely outside nor completely inside. For Nicolas, his tattoo, like the shield of Perseus, reflected back the gaze of an other who could remind him of the difference of the sexes, and thus he felt protected from his fear of remaining petrified by his own projected castration anxiety. This was a meta-psychological function for fencing off the representational void he feared he would be sucked into, and for keeping his bodily ego from falling into it at the same time, reinforcing his shaky system of repression.
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Christine Condamin-Pouvelle : temporal issues in the treatment of a young encopresic adolescent : between urgency and incompleteness
Thierry A., aged 12, came to consult me for a symptom of primary encopresy. The work took the form of stories in words and drawings, in which his archaic fantasies erupt. The sadistic-anal and sadistic-oral drives are expressed in an attempt to annihilate the object. The manic pole appears very present, along with the depressive pole, which will be expressed more and more openly, to the point of a direct acknowledgement of solitude and sadness. Afterwards comes the time of repair, of re-birth, and of the conquest which will lead Thierry to a greater unity of the Ego and to better drive integration.
Ignacio Melo : passages to the body
I suggest the hypothesis of one instance, the body, which would be situated between the somatic and the psyche. It would be a place of representation as well as a borderline concept, like the drive which lies in it. I think of it mainly as an instrument for generating figurability. Thanks to its articulation with the subconscious, it would contribute the transforming potential of somatic excitation. This potential, created within the narcissistic relationship with the primal object, undergoes considerable readjustments with the arrival of puberty.
Yvon Brès : isolated and amplified
The “ sexual liberation ” of the sixties gives way, in our time, to equivocal social phenomena : pro-homosexuality propaganda, the tracking down of pedophiles, the dread of sexual harassment. In fact, liberation was sometimes replaced by a militancy ignorant of the real meaning of Freud’s “ sexual theory ”, particularly the idea he expressed in 1895, that some neurotic symptoms result from the “ isolation ” and “ exaggeration ” of components of the “ normal ” sexual act.
Gérard Bonnet : hands off my sexuality
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.
Stéphane Bourcet, Camille Rossi : adolescence at risk for prostitution
Prostitution short-circuits the psychical process of subjectivation, in an act that both defies and disavows, to better confront them, the incestuous fantasy and the prohibition of it, which has been badly enforced by ambivalent and uncertain parental imagos.
Annick Jullion : the practice of prostitution, an attempt to cure oneself ?
Accounts of prostitution behaviors make a point of mentioning the feverish need to act, to perform repetitive, compulsive sexual acts. Does one prostitute oneself in order to flee a painful psychical state, preferring the path of release through a magical act to that of affective overflow ?
Does one display oneself in drag on the streets or on cabaret stages in order to be admired, almighty, capable of getting anything ?
Is the sexual practice of prostitution an attempt at repairing a feeling that one’s identity is not secure ? When the narcissistic foundations are precarious, does prostitution come as an attempt at curing oneself ?
Viviane Dubol : prostitution, between bodily orifices and words, an experience of subjectivation ?
This article attempts a clinical reflection about the act of prostitution and the psychical stakes it puts into play. A review of the history of research hypotheses and important moments allows us to stress to what extent knowledge of the anamnesis and traumas is insufficient for understanding the destiny of prostitution. Listening to clinical cases led me to take into account the force of words that have the value of an injunction, such as the “ You’re just a prostitute ” or the “ I’m a prostitute ” constructed by the subject. It is within this context of sensitivity to words that the function of the “ fourth character ” was deployed, as a figure of the social female Other to whom the act of prostitution is addressed and what is at stake in it for the subject. In fact, and this is our working hypothesis, the erotology of some of the prostitute’s tricks would contribute to the construction of oneself through the auto-erotic experiences involving the bodily orifices and what psychoanalysis calls the little a object. What we describe of the “ symbolic trick ” suggests that love is not absent from such a process of subjectivation.
Jacques Goldberg, Philippe Givre : subjectivations in adolescence
As an approach to the work of adolescence, the notion of subjectivation involves an investigation into the specificity of the subject in question and the stakes of a process which will be drawn from an examination of three works. We will therefore have to revisit the singularity of these three original approaches to the processes of subjectivation: subject of the flesh and “ first unconscious ” (Cahn) ; oscillation between hysteric-depressive and basic melancholy (Richard) ; work on the active-passive turnabout and access to “ letting oneself be done to by the signifiers ” (Penot). The accent will be on the central function of the reality of the sexually differentiated body, which seems in some respects to be underestimated by these authors. In the second part of the article (which will appear in the next issue of the Revue) the options that we have chosen will lead to us to examine the subject’s relationship with its real “ potentials ”, which constitute it as a social and cultural subject, as well as the work of auto-creation and that of sublimation(s), understood to be essential to the loosening of the drives. If the subject in question is an ego-subject, this will result in a confrontation of two intentionalities within the clinical approaches : one having to do with the ego (functional and narrative) and the other with the subject (divided and confronted with castration.)
Olivier Ouvry : orlan, carnal art
Orlan, carnal art, film of Stephan Oriach, depicts transformations in the artists own body. It is a discourse on art in place of that of science. The goal is to use technology to reduce the gap between what one is and what one has. The body is a tool for saying what one wants. It is a matter of subverting, in a dimension of transgrassion of criteria and social stereotypes, the notion of appearance in order to bring it down. The violence of this exhibition questions the place of the spectators who are invited to a live performance of this act.