The very large number of adolescents who smoke cannabis in a festive – or recreational – way do not, of course, have an addictive relationship with “ joints ”. But it is interesting to note that the use of this product is never far from various aspects of the conflict that constitutes adolescent crisis : in addition to providing an alternative – or a complement – to alcohol-induced intoxication, it is a matter of modifying in a limited way what is thought and felt, so as to improve relations with other adolescents, familiarize oneself with desire and first sexual experiences, facilitate manifestations of humor and, sometimes, manage excessive sensitivity and disturbing sexual and aggressive fantasies. Psycho-educational interviews permit these adolescents to question more generally the malaise peculiar to their age, its relational consequences and the manner in which they try to remedy it. In this, the family may usefully be associated with the treatment.
The increasing number of requests for the institutional management of adolescents indicates either that adolescent crises have become more severe, or that the present forms of family organization render these families incompetent to manage the adolescents by themselves. This demand may be explained in part by the lack of procedures marking the passage to adulthood. Much adolescent behavior, in fact, re-enacts failed attempts at initiation rites. Work with adolescents can only be enriched and improved by knowledge of rites of passage practiced by traditional societies. The framework for containing violence and sexuality offered by these rites, the procedures for affiliation with the adult world which they implement, the re-elaboration of the symbolic which they impel, etc., make it possible to shed light on certain barriers that confront institutions for adolescents on a regular basis.
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
The metapsychological notions of drive and instinct should be carefully distinguished. So are they in Freud’s german language, which uses both termes instinkt and trieb in an absolutely different way. However, they have always been confused since strachey’s syncretic translation of both by « instinct ». Instincts and drives are opposites in man : innate and adapted on the one side, acquired (precociously) polymorphous and anarchic on the other side. Search for appeasement (instinct) against search for excitation (drive).
In the human being, there exist instinctual behaviours of self-preservation, of which the theory of attachment has demonstrated the width, the precocity (early competencies) and the intersubjective caracter. On the other hand, in the sexual domain, instinct makes its appearance only at the puberal or prepuberal time. It is in the midst of the « silence » of sexual instinct, between birth and puberty, that the sexual drive surges and develops. It does this while leaning on the self-preservation instinct, and through the process of « generalized seduction ».
At puberty, the sexual instinct has to compromise with the infantile drive, which is, so to speak, already « in office ».
It is the infantile sexual drive, as repressed in the unconscious, that makes the object of psychoanalysis.
Using an exercise book annotated by teenagers in the 4th form, this article shows how the latter enter into a problematic of sexual investment of an objectal nature, through various types of relations – narcissistic, homosexual and heterosexual – by using play and humour. Keeping a certain continuity with the obscene folklore of elementary school children, teenagers use school as a place for learning about adult sexuality away from the family, which has become unfit for sexual objectal investment, and from peer groups too much centred on homophilia.
There are men who remind us that the flow of history is neither unhurried nor measured. Caravaggio (1571-1610) was one of these, thanks to innovations that were so radical they changed the course of Occidental painting. A notorious troublemaker – he was convicted of murder – he never ceased painting, be it under the protection of liberal patrons or on the run from papal justice. The disparity between the suspended moments he captured on canvas and his wayward wanderings punctuated with actions suggests that, despite the seminal nature of his work, his creative powers never quite prevailed over the attraction of the abyss he staged right from his early production. The drift accelerated in later years whilst he still engaged, sheltered by his canvas, in large religious compositions, exploring themes of despair and seeking out divine release.
Adolescence is often considered as a passage. In every culture, there are ways of setlling and regulating problems of passage from one status to another – among these the status of adolescent – without too much anxiety for novices and already initiated adults. In ours o-called modern societies, which are complex and culturally mixed, there seems to be a greater risk of adolescents getting lost and remain on the margins. We would like to clarify the notion of rites of passage recall their definition and functions using the work of A. Van Gennep.
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.
In the 19th century the Bible suggested a new approach of the human body to the Merinas who were the most powerful and most evalized kingdom in Malagasy. Christianism was supposed to inspire them towards an integration into » civilization « . Some ancestral institutions, believed to be adverse to the new traditions were given up. Yet, the » carnal need « , which was the neologism by which the missionaries defined lust remained insensitive to the christianization of the customs. The Merinas used sexuality as a field for resistance, confronted as they were to the fear of a total seizure of their identity by the Westerners. Whether it be amid the royal family or with common people, the actors were mainly adolescents : their behaviour had been approved by their parents.
The fear of Aids makes the love encounter far more complex and creates an upheaval in the relationships of adolescents in the course of their first approaches of sexuality. The mad desire to touch the other person, magnificently embodied in the love ideal, can be hindered.
The author thus wonders whether those adolescents were to repeat phylogenitically the several stages of courtly love.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7