This paper explores the « basic endo-psychical situation » described by Fairburn. This situation is that of a split « ego » ; in other words, a schizoid position that Fairburn considered to be central, and is the basis for his theory of mental structure. The « basic endo-psychical situation » is made up of three structures of the « ego » which, while roughly corresponding to Freud’s tripartite division, are conceived as « ego » structures that are intrinsically dynamic in relation to each other. It is the anti-libidinal ego structure, or « internal saboteur » that occupies the central position in this text.
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Haouri Maïdi : passion and adolescence
Passion and adolescence both call to mind the issue of excess, excess in the extreme, over-the-top. Here, love is insane and unbearable, more related to the need for the other than to the expression of desire. Also, in addition to the demand for control over the other who causes the need, we also find in the passionate subject an intra-subjective sadomasochism which is acted, as well as frequent self-destructive conduct (auto-sadism). Here, the victim and the tormenter are particularly dissolved and melded together.
Pablo Votadoro, Richard Retchman, Sarah Stern : contagious anxiety
The adolescent process sometimes leads to an anxiety about disappearing, of being annihilated, whose main characteristic is that can be shared – and may even be contagious – among one’s family and friends. In this case, it dramatizes itself, most often casting the body as the principle protagonist.
Philippe Pierre Tedo : tellurics
More and more adolescents on the threshold of puberty engage in morbid attacks on their own body, particularly in the form of scarification and burns. Clinical work with these patients shows how serious the disorders are. All these patients have a history of confirmed sexual violence. Most bear the stigma of some real childhood trauma. The others are damaged by potentially incestuous interrelationships that have been woven within the family. The emergence of the experiences of puberty have cataclysmic effects on the psyche. The body begins to stir and seizes power as the privileged locus of expression, for an attempt at figuring, through the act, a psychical issue that cannot yet be elaborated.
Catherine Matha, Claude Savinaud : from wounds to sacrificial mortifications *.*
In this article, the authors reflect on the masochistic dimension of scarification practices. The displayed erogenous masochism reveals a deficiency of the pre-conscious processes in containing the pulsional pressure through the reversal of feminine passivity into self-agressive activity. The identification to a feminine position which connect eroticism with masochism is reduced to practices of incorporation of unfading signs wich themselves indicate the absence of introjection of the object qualities. These behaviours reveal an impossible hysterisation of intrapsychic conflicts, but also indicate chances of overtaking this conflict initiated by the emergence of puberty and their subjectivation.
Véronique Dufour, Serge Lesourd : scarifications, traces of nothing
Using their work with an adolescent girl who scarifies herself, the authors suggest that passages to the act involving the body be read as an attempt, differentiated by practice, to construct an object of desire. The scarifications carry out this operation by means of cutting, while piercing sustains it through drive excitation, which translates a differentiated relation between the subject and the Other.
David le Breton : the skin’s depth
The skin is, for better or worse, an instrument for constructing identity, playfully, through tattoos or piercing, or more painfully, through scarification. By painfully sacrificing a part of oneself, blood, the individual strives to save what is essential. By inflicting a controlled pain on himself, he fights against suffering that is infinitely worse. In order to save the forest, it is necessary to sacrifice one part of it. In the same way, if one is to get on with one’s life, one must sometimes hurt oneself as a way of combating distress.
Nathalie Zilkha : shame(s)
With reference to fundamental aspects of the adolescent process, the author explores the issue of the transformation of experiences of shame at this age, their disorganization and reorganization. She emphasizes the things that contribute to the often traumatic character of shame and its impact on the subject’s narcissism, especially passivation in the face of the genital and pre-genital drive emergences of puberty, and the modifying of identifications.
Ignacio Melo : passages to the body II
In the face-to-face encounter between a teenager and a psychoanalyst, the body is not only a part of speech but also a palpable and immediate element offered up to the other’s gaze, a fortiori when there are tattoos, piercing, or self-mutilation. In such circumstances, remaining a psychoanalyst-subject entails a response that cannot be dissociated from the construction of a theory about the Body.
Philippe Gutton : suffering … to believe in oneself
Self-mutilation would be a belief device which coats a great difficulty in believing in one’s own subjectal construction. A simple device, if it aims to play out sadomasochistic scenarios according to an hysterical model. A more complex one when it fulfills a transitory fetishistic mission. These behaviors have a dramatic effect on the narcissistic collapses of puberty.