Michael Jackson is a figure of eternal adolescence, replaying a painful and inaccessible process of individuation. His metamorphoses echo the psychical and physical transformations of pubescent youngsters. His myth, shot through with genealogical ruptures, evokes a character in the throes of a powerful desire for self-engenderment. His polymorphism maximizes the possibilities for adolescent identification and his media-genic quality helps him to be appropriated as a social demand. His ability to incarnate omnipotence makes him a likely support for projection, as he echoes the narcissistic desires of young people.
By analyzing Michael Jackson’s « Thriller » video, we offer a discussion of adolescent metamorphosis. Through an extraordinary self-fiction linking cinematic reference to myth and science fiction, Jackson shows, with a radical and transgressive postmodern gesture, the ridiculousness of such oppositions as man-woman, angel-demon, human-animal, living-dead, reality-fiction – mere pairings whose structuring power he shatters. What can one say about a body primary function seems to be go from one transformation to another, to keep metamorphosizing into harrowing new extremes, in order to replay the metamorphosis of adolescence, which is here marked by a tragic negativity?
The adult human other takes up the conceptualization hitherto worked on as « the parental subject of the transference ». His humanity is an expression of his willingness to participate in the pubertary processes during sublimation. This other represents the adult-ness that shows the control of the second topic and can thus support interpretation by the infantile « already-there » of the innovating pubertary as well as adolescent subjectal creation. The closeness of the bond is not without risk.
Anxiety about guilt, as Freud showed in 1916, may be the origin of transgressive behaviors. The delinquent passage to the act, distinguished by its intrapsychical dynamic of resorting to the act, fits in with Freud’s hypothesis. Adolescence can give rise to a feeling of guilt engendered by parricidal fantasies, but also to the need for punishment as the symbolic equivalent to homosexual submission to the father, who can confer his masculinity upon the son.
Using a case involving a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, and exchanges between therapists during a Seminar in Adolescent Psychotherapy, we will try to pinpoint what underlies the issue of identity conquest and the problem of homosexuality in adolescence. The « fantasy of the blade » – a reference to the religious identificatory figure of St. George – helps organize theoretical and clinical observations.
It is standard practice to attribute the human acts of excessive violence that occur regularly in private and in public to an unleashing of aggressive drives : one speaks of the weakness of instances of the superego which have not fulfilled their role. Freud regularly refers to this schema, starting with his establishment of the second topic, and he is the inspiration behind most of the educational models now in force. However, the very ideals that are supposed to control drives can sometimes lead to violent passages to the act. In such cases, there is idealization without sublimation, and the ideal which is at the heart of the idealization is invested for its own sake. Instead of being the vector for desires, opening the way for sublimation, it bottles up drive energy and liberates it in an explosive way. This is why a deeper analysis of ideals is needed if one is to discover the components of the explosion and the way of dealing with it.
Adolescent exaltation before its idol will considered as a fundamentally religious moment. To grasp the psychical stakes of this social phenomenon, the author suggests that its metapsychological coordinates and function be considered in light of the scene of Hiflosigkeit – the matrix of religious representations. The idol will be understood as the perceptive image which saturates the gaze, thus annihilating the blind spot which establishes perception from the starting point of lack (la Chose). Paradoxically, this passion for the idol will be turn out to be a rampart against desire. This reading enables us to understand better the unusual strategy of the monotheistic Jewish religion against idolatry – which de-totalizes the figure that cannot withstand lack. Finally, to understand how the idol is a specifically adolescent phenomenon, the author offers a rereading of the idea of sexual trauma, as revealed by the moment of adolescence.
Exploring love means facing up to the wounds it inflicts ; it means taking into consideration its cruelty as well as its tenderness and sensuality. Its possible consequence, sexual pleasure, will be looked here from the perspective of psychical reality, and the expression the this reality confers upon it in the Christian religion
Transcultural consultation with immigrant adolescents who have entered France alone and have experienced trauma express the mobilization of religious reference points that help us to reflect upon the conjuncture between adolescence, trauma and religion. The patient’s reference to religion is developed through three spaces: the symbolic space of the word of the father, the space of social discourse which historicizes the subject and affiliates him with a culture, and the space of myth and universal questions which bind the individual to the group. By looking clinically at the dynamic of consultation in the cases of two young Muslim patients from sub-Saharan Africa, we are able to see the mobilization of religious feeling as a therapeutic tool.
Using two clinical cases showing how impossible de-idealization is in late adolescence, the article explores the specific nature of religious idealizations. It shows the intrinsic relation between the ideal, the need for the absolute and faith in a divine figure. The ensuing study of paths followed by three adolescents helps give an idea of an ambiguity intrinsic to the religious ideal.
Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 835-851.
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