Loss of object and breakdown in the adolescent psychopathology

The adolescence corresponds to the period of life where the confrontation in the loss is lively, crucial, particularly at the end of adolescence, when are imperative the changes of identity, ideals, self-image and identity referents, when it is necessary to grant to finish the adolescence without perishing. We present the case of six teenagers having between 17 and 19 years, met for different motives for consultation (teenagers demonstrating delirious episodes or behavioural troubles and misconduct, with social difficulties) having satisfied a protocol of TAT. The end of the adolescence signs the elaboration of the depressive position, the problem of which is reactivated during the presentation of the boards of the TAT. According to the significant registration of the events of life (separation, breaks, delirious episodes), the narrative capacity of certain teenagers will be inhibited. The analysis of narratives in the TAT gives evidence of the modalities of psychic treatment of the loss or quite other traumatizing event. Indeed, the processes of discursive elaboration (formal and thematic) underline the efficiency or the failures of the mechanisms of defence and release, self-regulation and relational modality in front of the representation in the board 3 BM. This picture seems to us to support the reading of the psychic resources concerning the singular treatment modality for loss and for breakdown, strongly present at certain teenagers, whose traumatic load of events of life could not be still exceeded. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.