The imaginary constructions of Léo, aged 20, are all-mighty and protective war machines that play out in dystopian narratives. They reveal the underlying presence of an influencing machine that has something paranoid and threatening for the pubertary. In tension with this influencing machine, Léo’s “de-influencing machine” tends to counter and reverse the destructive drives and support the groundwork for a unified body image.
Adolescence, 2026, 44, 1, 115-127.
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.
The pubertaire (pubertary) defines an external grasp of the subject by genital instinct and its societal expressions. The phenomenon requires psychic work of perlaboration and modifies the analyzing situation with adolescents, especially modes of transference and counter-transference.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 161-167.
This article sums up the author’s ideas about the passage through adolescence. When the human event of the negative pubertary occurs in the subjectal development of the infantile organization, it gives rise to an unknown life-force that instigates adolescent creativity, rich in representations and leading to adolescent neurosis. How will the psychoanalyst welcome this gigantic adolescens work with its pitfalls into the transference-countertransference bond? For the adolescent to consent to adult life, work on the latency between the Ego and society must take place, with the risk of developing excessive narcissism or observing a subordination of the Ego.
Adolescence, 2024, 42, 2, 201-235.
The authors see the activism of some adolescents in the fight against ecosystem mutations and the necessity of their being acknowledged by adults as the expression of a psychical work of democratization. The case of Jonathan, a tormented adolescent who raises ants, illustrates a possible way of encountering the non-human environment, one which is gratifying both for narcissism and for ideals, but which reveals considerable extinction anxiety.
Adolescence, 2021, 39, 1, 125-138.
Analyzing the case of a matricidal adolescent, the author envisions the passage to the criminal act as an impasse in the pubertary process. A study of history and of laws pertaining to minors gives a better idea of how theories of psychopathology have evolved towards a theory of pubertary psychosis. By weaving together the history of law, of the penal system and of psychiatry, the author offers a reading of the psychical fact that extends to the wider context in which it appears.
Adolescence, 2019, 37, 2, 289-312.
Using clinical experience with radicalized adolescent girls, the clinical analysis of one of them enables the authors to investigate the intra and inter-psychical issues of jihadist engagement. This offers a first glimpse of psychoanalytical thinking about the resonance between propaganda speeches and the trials of the pubertary. Radicalization is here seen as a symptom, potentially offering the subject a new form of protest that is adolescent and feminine.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 2, 403-412.
Adolescence, the age of possibilities, belongs to the field of discontinuity, the most perceptible form of which is corporal. Other discontinuities – psychic, familial, environmental – are proper to this age. Traces of the primary phases of development will echo these reorganizations.
Adolescence, 2017, 35, 1, 101-109.
In the context of grave illness, the specific qualities of the work of ordinary adolescence are tinted with problems inherent to the sick body, especially the control of the biological dimension and its lethalness. Two recent novels help us to understand how the resulting psychical and fantasy configurations infiltrate pubertary reorganizations in which appear issues of the sexual, sexuality, and romantic love in adolescence.
Adolescence, 2016, 34, 3, 645-650.
What do Balthus’ paintings of adolescence reveal ? Using Ph. Gutton’s recent book, Balthus et les jeunes filles ou le dévoilement du féminin, the painter’s work will be viewed in light of the issue of pubertary feminine metamorphosis. For like the psychoanalyst, the artist seems to understand that the pubertary feminine arises in the context of phallic infantile femininity. We also put ourselves in the place of Balthus’ young models, wondering what they are dreaming of.
Adolescence, 2015, 33, 1, 207-217.