Using the series Adolescence, this article offers a psychoanalytical and psycho-criminological reading of the masculinist passage to the act in adolescence. The analysis compares the fictional material with data from international literature, research, and expert practice with violent masculinists to show that the function of the act is a last-ditch effort to subjectivate a feeling of shame, narcissistic breakdown, and subjective non-existence.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 403-416.
In adolescents, some counter-phobic behaviors create distance with preconscious incestuous representations by driving them “out” into provocative acts. Facing up to the fear of being unmasked, the adolescent seeks recognition of his imposture by making the Other bear it.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 391-402.
This article explores the role of academic learning in the processes of subjectivation in adolescents who have been designated as gifted. It analyzes the way that investing in learning can support or weaken narcissism, depending on how adequately the school setting meets specific needs. The psychical and institutional conditions for dropping out of school are analyzed using a clinical vignette.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 379-390.
This paper aims at showing that if phobia eschews the traditional pattern of transference neuroses, it however finds its elaboration framework within the dimension of narcissism and its vicissitudes. Phobia is a symptôm meaning to insist on the overflow of the ego unable to handle an impulse ebb and flow and notably in the fact that, then, the ego does not have at hand sufficient elements that would enable it to translate into a net of representations the internal feeling of impotence or annihilation. The phobia emerges where the ego collapses or least threatens to collapse. It is within this narcissistic weakness, moreover in the gap, that the phobogenous object is swallowed up in order to try and bestow a meaning onto the subject’s feeling. That object which will be held a phobic object only when it can receive a name, is also meant to give a meaning to the counter-phobic object thus compensating the failing narcissistic function of the internal object. The counter-phobic objet is an “already-there” object wherefrom the phobic elaboration will be erected within its multifarious facets.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 361-378.
This article examines the investment of conversational AI by students presenting anxiety-based school refusal. Using the concepts of psychophobia and phobia of mental functioning, the author reads certain uses of AI as an anti-thinking prosthetic. He introduces the document-Ego, a contemporary function of subjectivation through the archive, from the inscribed body to the conversation history, which may either support elaboration or harden into a fossilized holding.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 347-359.
The author proposes that we look at the origin of the phobic symptom before it is formed – in other words, at anxiety. The notion of anxiety hysteria is revisited and studied in its relation to anxiety neurosis. The case of a 14-year-old adolescent boy illustrates the moment when anxiety neurosis does not find resolution in phobia, and the author details the reasons why in this case leads to a hypochondriac solution instead.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 335-345.
The article explores passages to the act in adolescents. It shows how humiliations suffered at school are transformed into a process of phobitization at school and into aggressive manifestations. The latter mobilize mechanisms of active turning-around and projective identification. Work undertaken in an institutional setting helps to restore a tertiary function and restart the processes of binding and subjectivation.
The author proposes a reassessment of the function of phobia at adolescence. Between the fear of the object and the anxiety of the subject, phobia creates the necessary gap so that a space for working through may be liable to be built up. Phobia is thus supposed to be a primary structure of the psychical functioning liable to restore, through projection, an internal homeostasia. Such is a way of handling anxiety which is most frequently used at adolescence since it is so difficult at puberty to have access to the sexed representations of internal conflicts.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 323-334.
The authors offer a critique of the notion of school phobia based on the multifamily group they have set up for adolescents who do not attend school and who resist treatment. They consider that this nosographic entity is both an obstacle to, and, paradoxically, a starting point for the elaboration of psychical conflicts. Their work shows the relevance of the multifamily approach to the treatment of out-of-school students at the middle and high school levels.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 293-304.
Using the case of Sophie, who exhibits a “school phobia”, this article will examine the metapsychological issues of a symptom whose nosographic evidence encompasses the complexity of adolescent reorganizations. The connections between actual neurosis and transference neurosis lead one to think of school as a locus for the displacement of Oedipal conflicts and the after-effects of the pubertary processes (pubertaire). Expressive arts therapies appear as essential for re-starting figuration, transference and subjectivation work.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 2, 281-292.