This article offers an analysis of Billy Elliot exploring the this adolescent’s battle against a silence that has been hanging over his family since his mother’s death. This quest is guided by the expression of his desire to dance. Our argument relies on C. Metz’s theory of the imaginary signifier and examines the enacting of a confrontation between the real, the unconscious, and desire, revealing the ethical and tragic journey of Billy’s desire.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 127-140.
Cet article propose une analyse de l’œuvre Billy Elliot en explorant la bataille menée par cet adolescent contre un silence qui pèse sur sa famille suite au décès de sa mère. Cette quête est éclairée par l’expression de son désir pour la danse. Les propos de cet écrit s’appuient sur la théorie du signifiant imaginaire de C. Metz et examinent la mise en scène d’une confrontation entre le réel, l’inconscient et le désir, révélant le parcours éthique et tragique du désir de Billy.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 127-140.
Images are especially powerful for adolescents and can be a way of expressing suffering. In the often noisy treatment of adolescents there is much to see, without reducing it merely to this manifest aspect. The use of images may also be part of the process of reinforcing and protecting narcissism. Thinking in images, as an intermediary for speech and a procedure that helps construct the psychical dynamic, can be a support for psychotherapeutic work.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 369-382.
Les images ont une force particulière chez les adolescents et peuvent être l’expression d’une souffrance. La clinique adolescente souvent bruyante donne à voir, sans se limiter à cette part manifeste. Le recours aux images peut aussi s’inscrire dans un processus de renforcement et de sauvegarde narcissique. Le penser en image en tant qu’intermédiaire de la parole et procédé au service d’une dynamique psychique en cours de construction peut être un support du travail psychothérapique.
Adolescence, 2020, 38, 2, 369-382.
L’idée de cet article vient d’une recherche sur le rapport au récit et à la narrativité à l’adolescence. À partir de l’analyse des formes narratives d’un groupe d’adolescents en grande difficulté scolaire, l’auteur montre comment la grammaire hors-norme de ces récits semble mettre en scène, de façon mimétique, une nouvelle grammaire contemporaine de l’image, propre au genre télévisuel de la télé-réalité.
Adolescence, 2015, 33, 4, 901-910.
Here we wish to delineate the contemporary social imaginary world of adolescence. Our purpose belongs to qualitative sociology, i. e. an attempt to describe phenomenologically a few signs selected as being typical but which no objective statistics would legitimate. The author wishes to find her way about the contradiction existing between the advertising exhibition of the handsome young bodies and some characteristics of adolescent aesthetics as it may be caught within their choice of self‑presentation, of music, comic strips, etc
Here we wish to delineate the contemporary social imaginary world of adolescence. Our purpose belongs to qualitative sociology, i. e. an attempt to describe phenomenologically a few signs selected as being typical but which no objective statistics would legitimate. The author wishes to find her way about the contradiction existing between the advertising exhibition of the handsome young bodies and some characteristics of adolescent aesthetics as it may be caught within their choice of self-presentation, of music, comic strips, etc.
One important cultural phenomenon concerning virtuality and adolescence may be the latter’s addiction to brand names.
Like the image, the brand, a modern equivalent of mythology, could be both an object and a relation. This would transform the perspective from which it is analyzed, particularly with regard to the bonds that adolescents maintain with brand names.
The “ virtual ” image does not exist, any more than the worlds it is supposed to generate. The orthodoxy – and some“ learned ” voices – are doing their best to smudge the lines between the real, the imaginary and what belongs to visual representation. To what purpose ? Here, high school students, when asked about the notion of the “ virtual ” compare their experience with the creation of digital images with representations they are elaborating and with values circulation in the social imagination. A meditation on what has become a “ passion for ignorance ”.
Transformations affecting youngsters’ relationship with their own image result from their adaptation to two radically new situations they are confronted with from earliest childhood : the omnipresence of images – most notably those that their parents make of them – and new family organizations in which the desire the child observes is maintained for a longer and longer time. « Being famous » is then perceived as the privileged means for resolving several contradictory desires and anxieties at the same time.