THE ISSUE OF ADOLESCENCE IN PSYCHOANALYSIS: CLINICAL ILLUSTRATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/upj/2025-3-3-7Keywords:
castration complex, psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic therapy, puberty, adolescence, Oedipus complex, ethics of psychoanalysis.Abstract
Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to clinically illustrate the unconscious issues and transfor- mations characteristic of adolescence, as well as the discoveries that the subject himself is capable of making in response to the challenges of adolescence in the process of psychoanalysis. Method. Clinical work with an 11-year-old adolescent boy using psychoanalysis as interpreted by the French school of psychoanalysis, not as a specific setting and format of work (5 times a week, using a couch), but as a special discursive practice and ethical position that allows one to listen to and hear the subject of the unconscious, taking into account the peculiarities of adolescence. The work was carried out under systematic supervision. Results. The article provides a detailed analysis of ten sessions with an ado- lescent, illustrating unconscious processes, findings, and transformations in key issues for the subject: the difference between genders and generations, castration and healing, the child’s place in relation to the parental couple, the search for the Name of the Father, and his overthrow. Based on classical and contemporary concepts of psychoanalytic theory and practice in working with adolescents, the authors illustrate the previously formulated ethical position of the psychoanalyst during adolescence. Conclusions. The comments on the case note how the adolescent invents his own subjective answers to the questions of puberty, turning to “scary” topics: injury, bullying, sadism, addictive behavior, and death. However, the authors justify the idea that these topics best enable the adolescent to sym- bolize the horror of physicality and the despair of his own and his parents’ castration during this period. Addressing these topics allows them to mentalize, comprehend, and represent what is initially unthinkable and beyond the physical. Based on the ethics of supporting the subject’s own inventions, the psychoanalyst does not offer other findings but, on the contrary, supports the subject in turning to themselves with the question of what desire and what interest concerns them.
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