Return to Adolescence homepage
ADOLESCENCE |
Published
twice yearly, a Journal of psychopathology and social
sciences. |
Summary : Sexualities and
Aids, autumn 99-17-2
FranÁoise Weil-Halpern : How to become
an adolescent in an hiv infected family
The surge of HIV in the paediatric field shattered the life
and future of families. It followed a reverse path with reference
to the progress that could have been made in the approach of the
consequences of separations, death and illnesses of any one
relative, parent or child. It forced us to have new conceptions
about life such as : the desire of a child, giving birth and
life, bringing up, protecting, guiding, keeping alive, helping to
live and helping to die. The mother, one of the children,
sometimes the father, all wage a merciless war against the
illness, against discrimination, isolation, the secret, pain,
fear of death. Confronted to such an earthquake, the author
questioned herself on what those infected children may or may not
feel at adolescence. Through these clinical vignettes and what
children say about themselves, the author tries to show what a
tragical ordeal they are confronted to. How do they survive to
such a slaughter ? How do they or don’t they achieve
theyr task of mourning ? What memories do they keep or are
they allowed to keep about their fathers, and/or their
mothers ? What kind of personal history will they build
therefrom ? What kind of guilt is their stake ? So many
questions for which sometimes there are no specific
answers ? The recent progress in the therapeutic field
brought changes that are both synonyms of hope and of pain.
Key-words : Aids, Mourning, Silence, Forbidding of
memory and of family history.
Serge Hefez : Adolescence and aids, the
impossible transmission
Most questions asked by HIV positive adolescents belonging to
our speech-group deal with the secret around the contaminations.
Such a secret entail splittings and denials which, at first,
protect the adolescent and the rest of the family. Then, however,
it rapidly turns into an attractor which swallows the emotional
cathexes, which structures a post towards which the resistances
of the discourse converge and which cristallizes the defence
mechanism system into an organizing figure of both repetition and
homeostasis.
The disavowal mechanisms of its transmission have been studied
a great deal on the transgenerational level. Groups and family
work however compell us to be more careful about new mechanisms,
namely the processes and psychological mechanisms at work in the
intergenerational dynamics.
Key-words : Secret, Aids, Transmission,
Speech-groups.
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.
Key-words Aids, Trauma, Parental narcissistic
objects.
Claude ThiaudiËre : Adolescents’
use : how to reduce the disorders of the epidemics
Starting from the realizing that prevention of Aids among
adolescents and youths is important whereas the epidemics is of
mediocre concern to that population, the author begins to ponder
on the complexities of the social representations associating
Aids and adolescence, starting from the idea that such categories
result from a task of the social institutions. Hence developing a
prevention discourse on Aids with those categories entails Aids
to be thus integrated into a consensus discourse rather that
speaking in terms of marginal categories (homosexuals, addicts,
African migrants). When referring to both these categories, what
is at stake are patterns of social functioning (the biographical
institution in the case of adolescence, the territorial group for
youth). Such a reading of the action of prevention shows the
underlying political splitting, i.e. on the one hand, adolescence
that should be protected from the risks run by Aids ; on the
other hand, youth that should be protected from the risk run by
society due to Aids.
Key-words : Prevention, Aids, Adolescence, Youth,
Social institutions.
Bruno Deswaene : Adolescence and
catastrophe
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.
Key-words : Sexual assault, Trauma, Latency,
Perversion.
Moses Laufer : Sexual abuse or a
delusional structure ? from adolescent to young adult
The treatment of an adolescent patient who recalled having
been sexually abused in childhood by her father is described. In
the course of treatment, various doubts were raised in the
analyst’s mind about the truth of this memory.
As the analysis progressed, the analyst felt that the
patient’s responses to interpretations were signs of the
presence of a delusional structure. When the patient felt that
the analyst doubted her memory, or was not on her side, she
angrily and vengefully broke off her treatment. She remains a
very vulnerable young woman.
The delusional structure contained the patient’s sexual
need to destroy the male’s potency as a defense against her
longing for the oedipal mother who, in reality, had left the
patient for a new husband.
Key-words : Sexual abuse, Delusional structure.
Serge Lesourd : A new object of
fantasy ?
Aids is inscribed as a return of death within sexuality after
the dazzling blaze of total enjoyment in the years of
" sexual liberation ". It stresses the
passage to adolescent genital sexuality of a hue which is quite
different and yet quite similar to Freud’s cases of
adolescents and Dora’s in particular. Such a return of death
within the genital sexual accounts for the new sexual behaviours
of adolescents (faithfulness, baby-couples, collective rapes) but
also comes to be part and parcel of every adult cure, since the
relationship towards the adult and towards love are now
different, turning Aids into a real object of fantasy.
Key-words : Aids, Complementarity of the sexes,
Fantasy object, Adolescent operation.
Philippe Hofman : Adolescence, aids and
prison
This paper tries to analyze the pathologies, behaviours,
cultural hiatus and psychical representations of adolescents in
prison. Such a research was conceived according to their own
conception of Aids. The several multifarious associations
generated by this illness stress the link existing between risk
behaviours and sexual representations. Here the whole of the
adolescent problematics becomes caricatural.
Key-words : Prison, Aids, Narcissism, Sexuality.
Hubert Lisandre : A prevention of the
angel ?
Though being a " young homosexual " does
not mean a specific risk of being contaminated by Aids, it may be
studied as a priviledged figure of the psychological stakes
liable to guide an adequate prevention, notably as regards the
reference to the Oedipian father. Gabriel’s discourse,
coming from a research dealing with the unconscious dimension of
prevention, enables to stress a problematic
" angelism " that may be considered as a real
risk factor and questions reversely the present politics of
prevention as well as the position of the psychologist in front
of a youth on the register of his sexuality.
Key-words : Aids, Prevention, Sexuality,
Fantasies, Oedipian father.
Brigitte Dutillieux, Caroline Lebrun,
BÈrengËre Porret : Aids : a sesame for fil santÈ
jeunes
This paper shows how the theme of Aids is tackled and used by
those youths who call Fil SantÈ Jeunes (a free help
line). Aids appears there no longer as a displacement pattern but
as a true illness we should make out among others the ordinary
fantasmatic productions linked to the puberty problematics and
the pathological discourse of young adults. Even in calls for
fun, the listener must take into account the reality of the
epidemics and should take car of prevention.
Key-words : Aids, Puberty, Help line,
Figures of displacement, Prevention.
Didier Lauru : Madness of touch
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.
Key-words : Aids, Sexuality, Courtly love.
Marie-Jose del Volgo : The fear of
saÔd’s aids : ý propos ali
On the occasion of a session meant to explore his breathing
capacities, I receive Ali as an M.D. This youth, aged 25 will
tell me about his feeling depressed and his fear of Aids. Due to
the setting enabling " a moment to voice
things ", and to this ethical position of listening to
Ali with reference to the psychoanalytic method, the analysis of
the signifyiers lead me to bring his fear of Aids and his
brother’s together within the associations knot of his
discourse. Amid a technoscientific medical approach which is
gradually more and more dehumanized, clinical psychopathology and
psychoanalysis have the vocation to restore the ethical function
and value of illness and care.
Key-words : Ethics, Medicine, Psychoanalysis,
Clinical psychopathology, Aids.
AndrÈ-Michel Gardey : Regression and
building of deferred actions, hiv positivity and trauma
This paper presents a clinical case in which an
" unpleasant encounter " in reality, i.e. the
announcement of bearing the HIV virus has entailed an immediate
regression of the subject in time towards that very moment of his
adolescence in which some kind of psychological rehandling had
been stopped. It discusses the regression towards the infantile
that took place, leading to a re-negociation in the deferred
action of the Oedipian conflict that had suddenly been stopped
and fixed on the occasion of the death of the father when the
subject was 15. It suggests the hypothesis according to which
this may have taken place again in a progredient rehandling in
which his own confrontation to the death to come at last offered
the subject the opprtunity, that had remained uncertain up to
then, to identify himself to the father through death and thus
regain some kind of filial relationship in a rehabilitation of
its function. To leave behind a grandiose father, outside the
possibilities of any form of identification, in order to erect an
Oedipian father liable to be an ideal and also to be structuring,
seems to have been one of the outcome of seropositivity.
Key-words : Seropositivity, Death, Regression,
Deferred identification, Pregenital grandiose father vs Oedipian
father.
Nino Rizzo : From the fear of love to
love of aids
After the decade of the 80’s, Aids has become an
unavoidable fact of life for teenagers and young adults. This may
be indeed more psychological than real. It has become a social
phenomenon with obvious quantitative and statistical aspects. How
therefore is the psychological reality articulated in the
individual confronted to Aids ? Such an articulation seems
to depend upon the psychological structure of adolescence thus
becoming some kind of " revelator " of this
deep down structure. Through the analysis of a young borderline
individual, the author tries to show its significance for such a
youth, its place in her psychological economy and the benefits
that may be, or have been, drawn from it. In the theoretical
analysis that follows, the focus lies in the pertinence of the
concepts of death instinct and life instinct in the clinical
approach of borderline patients.
Key-words : Aids, Death and life instincts,
Borderline patients.
FranÁois Pommier : Aids and the fantasy
of immortality
The defence strategies of the Aids pathologies towards
finitude strongly recall those building themselves up during
adolescence. An ego wounded and attacked by the unbinding forces
and infantile ideals trying to disentangle themselves rest in the
latter. The resurgence of the fantasy of immortality coming up
again and unfolding itself during puberty enables the wiping out
or the misappreciation of the wound. Through some extracts from
the psychoanalytic cure of a patient suffering from Aids, we
shall try to show how such a fantasy is liable to emerge and also
how far the psychoanalyst, with reference to the idea of a
forecast death may find himself blotted out from his position of
neutrality and confronted to his own belief in immortality.
Key-words : Aids, Fantasy of immortality,
Counter-transference.
Marie Choquet : Risk behaviour at
adolescence
In this paper, the author comments two epidemiological studies
on the use of condoms with youths between 15 and 18 (H. Lagrange,
B. Lhomond, and the ACSJ team) and the risk frequency rate of
Aids among the young drug-users (F.Lert). She draws the following
conclusions :
- adolescents are responsible subjects who do respond to
health messages,
- prevention actions may be useful and efficient,
- however the actions with high-risk youths should be
thought over more carefully.
Key-words : Aids, Drugs, Condoms, Prevention.
Alain Abelhauser, Laurent Ottavi :
Between clinical approach and ethics
The " ethical questions " raised by Aids
are not specific to it. Yet, though not specific to it, they may
take an examplary character as is evidenced by the clinical
situation which we present here. The latter, by confronting the
doctors to a specific impossible choice, and putting the
" paternal function " directly at play,
enables us to define what we suggest to call an
" ethical position ", as opposed to the
concepts of deontology or morals, and stress its essential link
with the " clinical " touch understood as an
art of the " case-to-case ", i.e. a place
where the singularity of the subject is to be revealed.
Key-words : Clinical approach, Ethics,
" Paternal function ", Medical
confidentiality, Aids.
Pierre Angel : Prevention strategies and
aids
The elaboration and organization of health educational
programms with youths should meet precise criteria. Here, the
author discusses prevention in terms of HIV and drug addiction.
Only a credible information, adapted to the public aimed at, may
exercize some positive influence : it should be given mainly
to vulnerable subjects but also to the whole community.
International cooperation in that field is more than ever on
today’s agenda.
Key-words : Prevention, Aids, Drug-addiction.
Dana Rudelic-Fernandez : What kind of
language should be used for prevention at school ?
In the course of prevention network in CRIPS, the author
presents a research carried out on the the language underlying
the actions of communication and prevention of Aids towards young
people. The aim was to analyze, amid every single act of
communication the representations covering words in order to
guarantee that the messages that are emitted do indeed refer to
the realities and values that organize on the one hand the
sociolinguistic universe of the adults and on the other, that of
the youths. The question thus asked is whether the modes of
expresion can be transposed one from the other.
Key-words : Prevention, Language, Aids.
Emmanuel Hirsch : Morals and ethics of
prevention : questions
In the fight against HIV-Aids, prevention strategies are a
determining stake. Can one however be satisfied with devices that
would not be submitted to a critical assessment ? From the
point of view of its impact and consequences, prevention must be
both at once efficient and respectful of the person in its rights
and values. The adolescent should be able to be granted an access
to all information allowing him to have a series of autonomous
choices at hand and which also would enable him to stress his own
responsibilities whereas at the same time his frailties would be
taken into account.
Key-words : Ethics, Morals, Prevention.
Patrick Alvin : Pondering about the
liability to emotional behaviour adolescence
The study of the intermediary states or physiological
determinants of a liability to emotional behaviour at adolescence
necessarily calls forth the psychology of development and
endocrinology of behaviours. If one holds on to hormon biology,
and sex hormons in particular, both levels of significant effects
may be summed up in an activating influence, contemporary to
puberty and a far prior organizing influence, contemporary to the
ante- and peri-natal period. According to both these levels of
influence, one should be able to distinguish between the direct
and indirect effects, knowing that all of them are at work
simultaneously, in proportions that are of course diverse and
often very difficult to precise. The data we have at present
suggest that we should relativize a far too simplistic image of a
" hormonal storm " wherefrom an emotional
" storm and stress " specific to adolescence
would result. These data stress important differences according
to the sex and also stress the joint part played by the several
factors coming from the environment.
Key-words : Liability to emotional behaviour,
Physiology, Puberty.
Dominique J. Arnoux : Sophie’s good
fortune
An episode in the life of S. Freud, i.e. the engagement of his
daughter Sophie with Max exmplify how counter-transference
affects about identity come in contact with the working through
surging in the adult when their children discover and show off a
liable genital sexuality, thus experiencing love feelings and
emotions.
Key-words : Freud, Sexual genitality,
Counter-transference, Worlking-through.
Damien Rwegera : The situation in africa
The Aids epidemics that does not seem to regress in Africa has
a catastrophic impact on children, adolescents and adults. The
consequences of such a situation are sanitary, economic and
demographic. The adolescents, who are more than a billion in the
world, are very concerned, particularly in Africa where only very
few of them go to school and who for many of them either remain
in the streets and/or prostitute themselves. Anti-Aids committees
have been organized among school children and teachers,
information and education in terms of prevention try to move as
far as the rural villages. Associations try to help the
authorities. People suffering from Aids themselves try to inform
and by telling their stories promote a decline of denial and
exclusion. Yet medical and psychosocial help and care should be
better, for, if they weren’t, the discourse on prevention
would be totally useless.
Key-words : Aids, Africa, Prevention,
Associations.
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.
Key-words : Merina (Malagasy), Sexuality,
Religion, History.
Starting from the traditional aetiology of mental illness in
Sub Saharan Africa, the author questions the concept of
" ancestor child " in the interpretation of
mental disorders with African adolescents belonging to the first
generation of migrant adolescents. Starting from an
ethnopsychoanalytic reading of two clinical vignettes, the author
stresses the reintroduction of the symbolical function of the
father, erected as it is on that very traditional etiology, with
two families exposed to acculturation. The author evidences the
therapeutic efficiency of that ethnopsychological method which
enabled both these adolescents to substract themselves from the
denial of a fialitation ascribed by such a cultural logic in
order not to be sacrificed to such a
" status " of an " ancestor
child ".
Key-words : Sub Saharan-Africa, Traditional
etiology of mental illness, Migration, Ethnopsychoanalysis.
Catherine Wieder : " A speech
is being hidden ", african adolescence and
psychopathology
After having analyzed in depth a file coming from Africa, the
author gathers the characteristics of adolescents in Benin,
Niger, Ivory Coast, Senegal, ZaÔr, Burkina Faso and some African
migrants in France. If these adolescents, for most of them, seem
to share the very same psychological problems as their French
contemporaries, theory, as far as it is concerned, remains deeply
influenced by the French but also is only too little influenced
by the sociological specificities of these countries.
Key-words : Africa, Adolescence, Psychopathology.
| Latest updating : april 2000 | Return to Adolescence homepage |