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 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.
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.