The possibility of psychanalysis in adolescence raises the question of the existance of psychoanalysis every time repression is secondary in the patient’s problematic. Using concepts of subjectivation and the subjectivating agent, this article proposes to describe the main principles of a possible practice of psychoanalysis with the adolescent.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°2, pp. 271-280.
Is there such thing as psychoanalysis of the adolescent ? Two points of view will be refuted, one which considers adolescence as the moment of repression after-the-fact and one which is frightened of the danger of enflamed passions in a two-person clinical situation. The history of theoretical elaborations about adolescence introduces one to a conception of the encounter between the psychoanalyst and the adolescent that can shed light on psychoanalytical practice with the adult.
The Freudian method of interpreting drive conflict and the transference is applicable with the adolescent, as is demonstrated by the treatment of a young adolescent presenting anorexic and addictive disorders. Here borderline ways of functioning correspond to contra-phobic projective defenses, repression being covered by splitting.
Some hypotheses are advanced concerning current adolescent and young adult pathologies (paradoxical recourse to forms of excitation meant to de-sexualize, externalization of psychical interiority) in a context of « civilization and its discontents ».
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°2, pp. 245-270.
I do not share the idea of deep-seated changes in adolescence – which is still a narcissistic crisis – nor in the psychoanalysis or psychotherapy of adolescents. However, the socio-cultural field has altered, and perhaps therapists are the first ones to feel the effects of this.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°2, pp. 231-235.
Metamorphosis establishes a paradoxical contradiction between originality and program, « hazard and necessity », disorder and order, difference and similarity, subject and subjection, making possible a reflection between sublimation and control. Also paradoxical is its happening in time, for the illusion of the pubertaire is creative insofar as there is oscillation between it and disillusion. Repeat R. Kaës’ fundamental adage whose paradoxical character cannot be missed : « The subject is first of all an inter-subject », the pubertary metamorphosis is in an exemplary way that of the inter-subject : it includes the other in its very procedure. There is no solitary structural change. The pubertaire is not a (re)finding of the object but a revelation of genital alterity
The « metamorphic contract » is singularly enlarged when it connotes the ongoing creation of a bond between subject and society, individual and group, singular discourse and cultural referent.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 171-189.
In the contemporary context, characterized among others by the shortage of roads drawn towards the empowerment, teenagers compete in originality to advance in any harmony with their society of consumption and image. Now, in spite of their absence of resistance, the imperative of assertion forces them to invest certain dimensions of the existence to be protected from the feeling of heteronomy. By investing the temporality, in particular by devoting to acts of desynchronization, by creating deliberately emergency situations and by provoking symbolic experiences of the ubiquity, young people redefine their reports in the temporal constraints which impose the rhythms of the collective life. The temporality appears then as a material of the autonomy.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 161-169.
The author suggests some lines of reflection about the mystery and phenomenon of death. One must indeed distinguish, as the Romans did, between mortalis, moribundus, moriens, and mortuus. This distinction is essential for enabling an organization of research on the intimate bond between conception, the primal, and the « ancient fear ». Relying also on clinical experience, the author points out that the concept of primary identification is essential to reading analytically the specific psychical activity that is called the work of trespass. The dying person does tend to form a last dyade with his caregiver, the last depository of the transference, along the model of the early relation with the mother.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 147-159.
Through the case of Émétério, young schizophrenic and talented photographer, the author wishes to show the importance of links between dead ends of the subjectivation of the adolescent process and the emergence of psychotic states at the end of this period of existence. In the psychotherapeutic setting, artistic work and the dream-work join in an attempt at reflexive representation of the failed psychic processes. The clinical analysis concerns more specifically the dialectic of the processes called « borderline », oscillating between creation and erasure of the differential boundaries, in connection with the hypotheses of G. Lavallée regarding the break of the containing and subjectivating reflexive circle of vision. The author also makes the hypothesis that the fates of this work of construction and demolition arouse a particular interest in adults about the relationships the teenager weaves with creation and death.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 135-145.
The adolescence, period convenient to acting out because of the internal and external reorganizations of the subject, is a period of paradoxes : need of autonomy and dependence, activity and passivity. It is difficult for some adolecents to be at the origin of a request of care which places them in a position of dependence to the adult-therapist. The forensic treatments, one of the protective measures for minors’ court use, allow to make compulsory for the adolescents to follow a psychic treatment. The article discusses the place of this measure in the adolesent’ care through a clinical vignette which describes a fifteen-year-old male adolescent, set in a symbiotic relation to his mother, victim of physical violence on behalf of his father in his childhood and who, having shown himself violent towards his mother, threatens to kill the social worker who ordered his fostering in a foyer. The forensic treatment in the adolescence : constraint or support ?
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 113-134.
The creative work is at the center of the operation teenager, marked by the encounter with the opposite sex, the confrontation with the limits and narcissistic discomfort, but also disillusionment resulting from the promises and hopes childhood. This profound change opens the way for the creative act or creation. Emergence of originality, intense expression, the pursuit of ideals, exploring systems of thought, production of new cultural objects, care for staging, are characteristic lines of the artistic creation which meet in the process of creation of one that is the adolescence. The act of creation he would return to the process of adolescence as a paradigm of creative crisis ? Is it specific portion adolescent in order to bring the concerns and distractions of this period of life ?
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 87-111.
The psychoanalytic method is one of the possible indications, constrained by the prevalence of the management of the transference. Indeed, the adolescent crisis is an ordinary event proper to the lability of the pathological manifestations and instability of the clinical structure. This is the reason why neither the specificity of the manifest disorders nor the structural diagnosis are the main criteria when deciding a referral. The preliminary interviews are thus essential to evaluate this indication that will be decisive, but will nevertheless remain temporarily dependent on the adolescent’s transferential engagement.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n°1, pp. 79-86.