Adolescence is part of a specific approach of time which upheavals the ontogenetic development of the being. In that sense, it becomes a morphogenetical catastrophe that has to be assimilated by the subject. Being a fundamentally structuring stage of development on the psychological level, it takes into account former experiences and points of breaking up. However, pain does not systematically mean breakdown or crisis though it normally partakes to a morbid interpretation.
The preliminary and early encounter with the sexual in the framework of a sexual assault having taken place during the latency period alters the traditional unfolding of the psychological balance. On the social level, such a preliminary emotional experience entails a specific perception of a catastrophic nature and most of the times does it inscribe the experience within a destructive vision, i.e. altering the totality of the elements that are part of the subject’s psychological stability. However, the taking over of this experience of the sexual as a life experience were not to be understood as an involution process or as a damming of the psychological evolution but were to be understood in terms of a stage that would have to be taken an account of in the successive unfolding of the catastrophes inscribed within human ontogenesis, thus connotating more specifically the stage of adolescence, itself being a specific time within the revelation of the sexual attempt. The latter would then become a moment of personalization by the subject of what is to him specifically an intimate catastrophe.
The problematics of parental narcissistic objects who escape is illustrated in the observation of a young adolescent girl confronted to Aids and to her parents’ death.
What today, adolescents think of Politics? Being involved, how do they feel political violence? Do they link Politics and trauma ? Onwards a rather antropological general questioning, study and interpretation should go beyond phenomenological points of view as regard to sociological facts, so go back, in a psychoanalytical way, to the individual trauma as a psychic question, linked with history and contexts, generation and transmission, belongingness and fililation.
This is a current say today : adolescents meet violence, act it, and the institutions they pass through are similarly involved ; On all scenes, bringing into war can be seen, facts accumulating altogether on social, political, family and cultural scenes, as well on internal psychic scenes whether individual, groupal or institutionalized. Many of these war scenes are the effects of transgressions, in speech as in act, now begining to be inscribed in social life and institutions. Social corruption, dislocation of social links, abscence of Politics, juridical compromizing, alliances between sciences and politics can be observed in generalization. What then could be a possible response, both institutional and cultural ? By which means could Politics come back ? Who should be the actors for it ? How would dreaming be again a structuring way ?
Can clinical psychoanalysis be useful in helping adolescent war victims ? What remains of the specificity of adolescence after serious trauma ? The author attempts to answer these questions by means of three clinical examples of adolescents whose psychical functioning was seriously compromised by traumatic experiences during the war in Bosnia.
From their work with an adolescent caught up in the violence of inter-ethnic strife, who became a warrior at the age of ten after his family was murdered by the other clan, the authors examine the enactment in reality of the murder of the father and its effects on the subject’s place within the social bond, leading in to the issues raised by the violence of today’s youths as a “ real-ization ” of the murder of the father.
A sense of honor is necessary for growing up. With regard to several clinical examples the author shows what is happening to the contrary during the humiliations of the war in Burundi. What mechanisms are at work? What are the uses of the group?
Following the collapse of revolutionary utopias, Iranian adolescents develop through their active role as voluntary enlistees in the Iran-Iraq war a “ culture of death ”, wherein the quest for the identity of martyr takes the place of a process of subjectivation.
Fundamentalist Islamic ideology and war fanaticism induce behaviors of narcissistic withdrawal, which prevent these youths from attaining the dimension of adult sexuality and going on from there to appropriate a discourse for themselves within a repressive society.
Through the clinical case of a former adolescent soldier, this article tries to show how this war has become the only response – in the form of an impasse – to adolescent processes for thousands of young Iranians.
The author approaches the principle difficulty of adolescents in a refugee camp: their inability to project themselves into the future.
“ When we began to work with adolescents who have been through war, we observed that their “ past ” was limited to the period when they experienced the war. We also noted that their imaginings about the war were either absent or traumatizing. ”
Several clinical observations support this assessment and allow for three conclusions :
– one must not proceed too quickly with adolescents in modifying their image of the future
– one must not create images for them
– one must not fear their terrible images
The author studies the nature of the therapist’s engagement, more precisely his counter-transference when faced with the treatment of trauma. The example of Agathe is presented; her treatment takes place in the particularly tragic atmosphere of Rwanda.
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