Institutions welcome the intrapsychic processes of adolescents, one of which is the appropriation of a private space, by changing the usual supports, which leads the youngsters and the professionals to the dynamic co-creation of differentiated space and boundaries. After recalling the symbolism of a space of one’s own in adolescence, the author presents difficulties relating to the group and certain defense mechanisms used, which are also found in classic, as well as specialized, institutions.
The author explores the underlying mechanics of the treatment of an adolescent girl, from the establishment of the treatment setting, through handling of a massive transference, up to the support offered to attempts at disengagement. Transference, in its various representations – disharmonic, negative, lateral – is considered with reference to the bonds maintained with the transitional object, which, once used and abused, lets itself be releggated to limbo in order to allow for the investment of new objects.
Clinical work with adolescents brings to the forefront the sensorial, yet this is little studied in the psychoanalytic field. Through the study of the case of Tamara, we will explore the place of the sensorial in the adolescent process, in its symbolizing dimension, but also in its paradoxical aspect, between emptiness and saturation. This allows us to approach some clinical clues by studying the clinician’s counter-transference with adolescents we call “tightrope walkers”.
In an obstetrics and gynecology service involving young women of African origin who are victims of genital excision and forced marriage, clinical treatments enable these women to retrace the traumatic experiences that led them to exile themselves. Through this work of historicization and elaboration, which aims to attenuate post-traumatic effects, one can discern, beyond the conscious motives and imperatives of survival, the role played by unconscious drive movements that have contributed to adolescents’ impulse to leave their family and cultural milieu.
Is the fundamental rule of free association suitable for adolescence with its re-awakening of the polymorphism of childhood sexuality? Between the illusions of the Ego and the danger of fragmentation, sexual subjectivation is possible if the clinician makes himself or herself available to the present of adolescent experience and assesses the Oedipal conflict which is still active, even if the drives and the object relation are experienced as abuse. The case of an adolescent girl will serve to illustrate how recourse to a variety of symptoms is an attempt to elicit the right responses from the therapist.
The author links abuse (betrayal by adults of the child’s expectation of the support necessary to its development) to the intolerance of prolonged dependence, which is part of the human condition and lays the groundwork for the insecurity that makes one vulnerable to narcissistic and even sexual seduction. He describes the consequences of these clinical conjunctions in the disabused adolescent that the abused child has become, and the issues in treatment.
The analytical situation and setting encourage the return of confusion, and the analyst has access to the subject’s private world. With sexual abuse, the Fantasy scene is crushed by that of the act. Confusion is fed by denial on the part of the entourage and by a disavowal of the traumatic experience. Transference helps one gain access to a time when the thread of fantasy can be picked up again, thanks to the psychotherapist’s affection. It is important that the disavowal not recur during the session.
This article presents the treatment of an adolescent boy grappling with the repercussions of a sexual assault he sufferedat a time when he was placed in care. The authors show the impact of traumas on the process of subjectivation, while emphasizing the importance of acknowledging the trauma, in order to enable gradual access to subjectivation.
Adolescents experience the horror of being sexually exploited. And these are the images that appear in treatment and call out to psychoanalysts at the very foundations of their theory. They cry out to express the horror of the experience, taking the place of the fantasy scene. Educative and healthcare institutions resist receiving and hearing them. What is the ethical responsibility of psychoanalysts in this listening?
This article will attempt to approach the issue of silences and their role in abuse, especially incest. It suggests that we examine the way that these are present in the transference relationship as the locus of an enactment of trauma and as an attempt to subjectivate the unsayable. These considerations are supported by an account of the early months of a psychotherapeutic treatment with an older adolescent girl, whose silences didn’t fail to make noise.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 223-232.
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