The author offers a theoretical and clinical reflection on the relation between perversion and a form of primal group functioning particular to violent adolescents, who come together in a group redefined as horde. The author notes that, in perversion as in a horde, there is a structural inability to defer impulse and deal with it on one’s own. The unconscious fantasy that guides adolescents grouped in a horde is illustrated by a case of gang rape.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 387-401.
The author offers a theoretical and clinical reflection about primal violence and it’s repercussions for the psychic constitution of the subject. A clinical case will enable us to explore the terror experienced in the primary relation and the consequences of this when drive issues play out with a substitute object. For the analyst, it is a matter of encouraging the emergence of a capacity for symbolic representation, while the violence of the trauma appears as the negative of this capacity.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 377-385.
Far more than any other period of life, adolescence is the container of a whole series of processes already inscribed in the child at birth. It is according to an adequate answer from the objects that these processes will reach full development. Violence to be will then take the shape of a life project, i.e the expression of the Superego signing the completion of adolescence; such is not the fate of sexual aggressors. Non integrated violence leads them to let their Ego being dissolved un the interplay of several processes. The aggression of the other person thus becomes a defense against an hallucinatory intrusion.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 365-375.
The significant rise in the reporting of “troubling information” (IP) raises questions for the institution and its caregivers about the right use of the child protection laws. Is this situation liable to become a slippery slope leading to misuse? The author focuses on the components of a clinical encounter that produces troubling information. Examination of several different ways of writing IPs (troubling information) gives an idea of the different subjective issues that are at stake for the adolescent.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 351-363.
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.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 337-349.
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.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 325-336.
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”.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 311-323.
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.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 297-310.
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.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 283-296.
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.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 2, 273-282.