MatisseIcaro

Editorial note, Reflections on the adolescent group with particular reference to trauma and accidents

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The preparation of this issue proposed by Paola Carbone on trauma and accidents during adolescence has had a long period of incubation that created a network of exchanges. First of all it produced an unusual editorial event (what authors treat such a specific and dramatic theme?) Secondly, a network of research (clinicians, theorists, and students exchanged pertinent information and questions), and ultimately creative communication and contacts (the large number of competent, courageous researchers with narrative capabilities in this field created dense and warm exchanges).

The painful theme of this issue paradoxically, had a regenerating effect on the curators, the authors and the editorial staff, so much so that we could even go as far as saying we sowed the seeds of knowledge, bonds and reparative hopes, and above all we were able to see a dimension of experience (the adolescent condition) recognised and individuated, not an occasional or a chronological dimension, but one that is part of the nucleus of subjectivity and the process of ‘subjectivization’: part of that field of shared elements of the group to Read more

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Presentation, Reflections on the adolescent group with particular reference to trauma and accidents

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The present issue deals with three closely connected arguments: adolescence, group and accidents.

When adolescence from a latent quietude bursts onto the scene, it evokes metaphors that more often than not have to do with the negative effects of trauma. The transformations that come about in puberty brusquely invading the experience of the Self, are often seen as an accident (‘adolescence suddenly hit me’, explains a young girl pointing to her chest with a frightened air of someone who had been hit by a car) these transformations have a certain momentousness on the continuity of existence.

Similarly, the accident –the primary cause of death between the ages of 15 and 24 years, is not as it seems a casual event, but is an expression of ‘acting-out’, in other words an action with two sides to it, both equally significant, on one hand the action offers the subject a flight from awareness, and on the other, stages a trauma without speech.

When we consider the group we wonder what relation there is between group, adolescence and accidents. Frequently, parents and teachers ask themselves (and ask us also), what are the risks connected to the adolescent and the group, often threateningly seen as a ‘gang’.

We have observed that adults usually see the adolescent/individual (‘their’ son or‘their’ pupil), substantially level-headed and the group of adolescents as a risk factor. On the contrary, adolescents perceive the relation between risk and group in a completely different way: failing a year at school, bad health or losing the affection of their parents is not a priority problem. The most extreme risk for an adolescent is losing his/her place in the group, and so he/she believes it’s worth the trouble to expose oneself to Read more

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Frank or the original death

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Abstract

This article leans on the narrative of a teenager hospitalized after an accident caused by a full of risk behaviour. It shows how the accidents bound to risky behaviors during the adolescence are often unconscious actualization by the teenager of primal scenes. These scenes are often built by turning round the scenes of the primal fantasies related to the human fate to death These accidents have a function to build a new deal of the primal identifications and a new sharing of the psychic positions of each in the family circle and also in the social Read more

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The ordalic scene and the work of individuation/separation at adolescence

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Abstract

This research studies the impact of the ordeal scene (old eng: ordal judgement) as being a mode of symbolization, specifically primary symbolization. We questioned the function of going through the experience of flirting with danger and with death that older adolescents use. For this analysis, we built an analyzer named the contact ordal.
It confirms the value of going back over, in differed action, these remaining scenes that are awaiting symbolization.
The contact ordal illustrates how there individuals attempt to re appropriate the residue-traces of the experience of ambiguity, and  in the background, reveal the existence of dangerous primal fantasies with a haunting effect. These fantasies enabled us to observe that going through the ordal experience is accompanied by the predominance of two major phantasms:The phantasm Read more

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Family and institutional care groups: resonances and transmission

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Abstract

Drawing on a clinical situation that brings together a family affected by adolescence and two institutions, the author considers the interaction between families and institutions and, more precisely, the psychic material brought into play following the cooperation set going in networking. Analysis of the clinical case makes it possible to consider whatever acts across both institutions as the psychodramatic staging of the family scene on the verge of symbolisation. The ideological rifts, the experiences of encroachment, the limits on the work and competence of each professional will be strongly mobilised. These effects, conflictual or not, are unlikely to be acknowledged in their counter-transferential form because, as they harm each party’s professional narcissism, they very often give rise to ideological rigidification and the reification of the other’s positions. The author suggests using as a methodological a priori the consideration of interactions between institutions as working tools for the transmission of the Read more

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The pact on acceptable risk a psychodynamica model for road safety education with a group of adolescents

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Abstract

The author presents a specific training methodology for road safety education which he called “Pact for Acceptable Risk”. This method, in contrast with the traditional techniques of road safety education, involves a mutual commitment among the younger generation and the previous ones, and expects the acquisition of the meaning of the rule is linked to the acceptance limit, the result of an educational journey around the meaning of the codes and their regulatory function relationships. The acquisition of the Highway Code is the culmination of this path, which can only be achieved by involving the adolescent group. The peer group is proposed as a valuable social resource for the prevention and as a laboratory in which to prepare the individual to carry it from the destructiveness of unnecessary risk, Read more

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Adolescents in the Hospital:accidents and pre-traumatic psychological dynamics

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Abstract

Objective: To explore the psychological characteristics and relationship factors pertaining to adolescents admitted to surgical and orthopaedic hospital wards for accidents of various kinds, in order to increase knowledge of the dynamics which contribute to accident risk among adolescents.

Method: A sample of 205 subjects (between 14 and 24 years of age) compared with a control group of 205 subjects was studied. Clinical semi-structured interviews were conducted by six psychotherapists specializing in adolescent psychotherapy. A modified Defence Mechanism Inventory was employed. Categorical data from the interviews were analysed by x square tests and DMI scales scores were analysed by two-factor analyses of variance. A cluster analysis of the entire sample based on DMI scores and all categorical variables, except the case/control variable, was done using SPAD.

Results: Young people who have had accidents, and in particular those who have had more than one, appear to have more problems than controls. These problems cover various areas of their present and past. In addition to these difficulties, there are two important psychodynamic elements: quality of self- esteem and how they are attempting to deal with the Read more

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Silence in intensive therapy: from an experience of the senses to an experience that makes sense

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Abstract

A short-term homogeneous group of young patients who experienced cranial trauma and recovery in intensive therapy is presented. Once the somatic and sensory experiences triggered off by the trauma and its treatment were mobilized in a group experience, elaboration and transformation of unthinkable elements into emotional, recognisable and narratable elements Read more

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Suicidal splinters: breackup and recovery within the structure of experience in adolescent crises

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Abstract

This paper addresses problems related to the risk of suicide in adolescence which represents an extreme experience to recover psychological functions that precede emotional and experiential development. Therapeutic group work, the elective setting for these cases, fosters processes of identification and subsequent individual de-identification. Subjectivation is a painful pursuit for the adolescent, and it is often considered as an experience that bears the marks of shame and humiliation due to the difficulties the adolescent encounters, which he or she tends to experience as extreme Read more

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Skin surface and mental skin: the burn-accident as a symptom

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Abstract

Through the suggestions provided by a clinical case a brief panorama has been carried out regarding the position of some authors in the psycho-analytical traditions on the functions of the skin in psychic development. The particularity of the case under examination is that of highlighting how an accident in adolescence can be the sign of a fracture in a very primitive phase of development of the personality; in this case the incapacity of the external-mother object to contain the components of Self of the child and making it an inadequate structure for the function of the boundary of skin for the components of his personality and the consequent creation of a defensive “second skin” which blocked the access to a phase of psycho-affective development adequate for his age. It is this second skin, this “shell” that it was necessary to dent to bring to light the deep malaise that had accompanied the life of this boy. It must be stressed also that in dealing with cases of this type, the analyst should not refer greatly to Read more

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Trauma “not responded to” and the prelogical nature of the accident in adolescence

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Abstract

The prelogical nature of the accident in adolescence talks about mind’s crushing when the time of a second birth implies the return of that automatic and primitive anguish when faced with ineluctable biological propelling forces of the body. This anguish is what the adolescent is not able to historicize in the inevitableness and at the same time, in the way entirely fortuitous of the accident happening, because the repetition of the traumatic situation is vital for his survival. The absence of the Other’s answer to the traumatic experience of the birth, introduces the tragic dimension that lives the reoccurrence of self- harmful behaviours. The tragic dimension of trauma is related with shame, and it subjugates adolescent to repeat it unless or until, an Other can at last respond and not confirm that trauma as the only way he is awarded to exist.

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The ambiguity of the risk. Reflections on data of a research empirical thematic

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Abstract

Through a contribution to the two books, “Le ali di Icaro” by Paola Carbone and “Il paradosso del giovane guidatore” to Anna Maria Giannini and Fabio Lucidi, it offers some ideas from examination of the results of empirical research conducted on the profile of young drivers at risk , which highlights the ambiguity of the concept of risk and its necessary Read more

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Body tattoo and body injured, the vicissitudes of omnipotent control over the body in adolescence

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Abstract

In the paper, tattoos and accidents are seen as two expressions of the omnipotent control that every adolescent feels he can exercise over his own body. The tattooed body expresses a form of control over the body that may even result in colonizing one’s skin. The injured body instead expresses the total loss of control over one’s body. I have tried to focus on some ways in which the attempt is made to exercise omnipotent control in adolescents.
One of the outcomes of the loss of control that the adolescent if exposed to is the fall, understood as the collapse of the grandiose self as intended by Kohut. In this regard, I have highlighted a reaction to the mental trauma, which follows the physical trauma, consisting in the attempt to restore the infantile grandiosity violated by the accident. In order to restore the grandiose self, the adolescent often refuses to deal with the traumatic area and to come to terms with the usually unpleasant reality which the accident exposes the body to. According to the paper, the group with adolescents conducted by an adult therapist makes it possible to approach and work through the trauma, instead of becoming isolated from the traumatic area in an attempt to relive the infantile grandiosity lost. The group with an adult can also help to contain the anxiety produced by the fear of losing the reference group of peers (Carbone, 2009), that is the group that continues to exist after the accident, albeit in different places, in meeting points that may vary and that for some time are surely distant from the fixed places the injured adolescent is forced to frequent. I have considered two different types of accidents, the traditional ones (including accidents during play, of which I provide an example) and non-traditional ones (including accidents induced by risk behaviour, like the ones Read more

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Adolescence and Reckless Driving: Critical Reflections

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Abstract

Analysing the data of a previous study, the authors present a number of considerations on the problem of adolescent reckless driving, noting that quantitative studies furnish a sort of snapshot of adolescent risky behaviour but do not equip one to understand the psychological significance of the phenomenon.  What they criticize is the psychological construct designated  sensation seeking, understood as a personality trait specific to the adolescent and young adult population, and the construct concerned with  self-regulatory efficacy, that is the inability to resist the pressures exerted by their peers to undertake dangerous actions. These constructs, which have been excessively generalized in psychological research, correspond to complex dynamics typical of an adolescence whose mental functioning is  dissociated, that is belonging neither to the world of adults nor to that of children nor to that of adolescents, which brings the need for a range of experiences, some of which may be physically very dangerous, in the course of the subject s ongoing response to the problems of adolescence.  This mental state belongs to a phase of life but also to a structural organization of the mind that can be reawakened in the course of an individual s life experience, which implies an intrapsychic dynamic that cannot be denied. The psychological constructs utilized, though susceptible to criticism from a methodological point of view, Read more