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.
This article explores the role of silence in the context of a treatment involving individual psychodrama with an adolescent. Silence appears as a structuring factor in the treatment format and as a support to elaboration and subjective appropriation. Using a clinical case, we will take an in-depth look at the issues at stake and the limits when silence is no longer able to sustain associations. Then it reveals weakness in the capacity for reflection and leads the therapists make some adjustments in their way of being present.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 113-126.
This article will offer an analysis of the silence adolescents impose on their therapist within group psychotherapy. The authors hypothesize that this silence is a projection of adolescents’ archaic anxieties and fantasies of devouring and incorporation onto their therapist. The latter, by offering him or herself as a transforming receptacle, opens the way for a more secondarized kind of psychical elaboration.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 101-112.
Using the case of Jerome, we will argue that the silences of affects in the speech of patients reveals how heavily repression weighs on the work of elaborating the metamorphoses of the pubertaire and how it can thus preside over the emergence of sexually violent acts. Such acts attest to the unpredictability of the work of adolescence. With the support of educational and legal third parties, therapeutic work will then focus on recomposing affects and creating new bonds within the transference.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 75-87.
This article will explore the unconscious mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of school truancy in the adolescent’s intrapsychic space, where it ties in with intersubjective links within educational links, and the institutional responses and reactions to truancy, as well as specific contributions of the psychologist from the National Education system.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 61-74.
The authors explore the role and the place of silence in clinical work with young adolescents for whom the reflecting function could not be structured in a stable enough way. In order for these patients to be able to latch onto the analyst’s silence as a space-time allowing them to dive into themselves and listen to themselves speaking, preliminary work is required. In these difficult treatments, it will be essential to listen to body language and to the language of acts, as well as to the transference onto the setting.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 35-48.
In this interview about her book, L’avenir d’un silence. Déréalisation, refoulement, amnésie des masses (The future of a silence: derealization, repression and amnesia of groups), Laurence Kahn describes the psychical functions of silence in both the individual and the group. The silence that hovers over the Nazi crimes in Germany serves to de-realize of the crimes that were committed. In families, silence, which plays a major role in adolescence, can serve the purposes of non-acknowledgement, but it can also, in some cases, serve the purposes of life.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 11-22.
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.
Cet article explore le rôle du silence dans un dispositif de psychodrame individuel pour adolescent. Le silence se présente comme un élément structurant du dispositif et un support d’élaboration et d’appropriation subjective. À partir d’un cas clinique nous approfondirons les enjeux et limites lorsque le silence n’est plus en mesure de soutenir l’associativité. Il révèle alors une fragilisation des capacités réflexives et conduit les thérapeutes à ajuster leur qualité de présence.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 113-126.
L’article propose d’analyser le silence imposé par des adolescents à leur thérapeute au sein d’un groupe psychothérapique. Les auteurs soutiennent l’hypothèse que ce silence est une projection des angoisses archaïques et des fantasmes de dévoration, d’incorporation des adolescents sur leur thérapeute. Cette dernière, en s’offrant comme réceptacle transformateur, ouvre la voie à une élaboration psychique plus secondarisée.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 101-112.