Formations de l’idéal, Hikikomori et virtuel à l’adolescence

Abstract

GoalsWithdrawal behaviours among teenagers have become a major topic in both clinical practice and the specialized literature. Known since the 1980s in Japan as Hikikomori, these behaviours are found across international nosographies in a variety of models. They are not always accompanied by intensive video gaming. There are varied uses of digital technology among teenagers, in terms of both quantity and quality. They can relate to the formation of an ideal, on the boundaries between virtual reality and illusion, it can also be a step toward the renewal of social relationship, since it enables a less threatening confrontation with the object. MethodUsing a clinical case of a fifteen-year-old teenager secluded in his home for eighteen months, we will explore the interactions between withdrawal behaviours and digital usages, from the perspective of the formation of an ideal. We will study how they intertwine with the formation of identity and with the processing of loss. ResultsIn Japan, where a cultural and sociological explanation of the Hikikomori is preferred, reference to psychiatry is excluded. The withdrawal can be understood within a particular form of culture, or rather a counter-culture, an idiom, a singular form of adolescent suffering that uses virtual reality as a specific mode of relationship with others and the world. The ideal, like adolescence itself, is characterized by its incompletion. It is also paradoxical, between confrontation with inadequacies and solutions to solve them. Virtual reality can thus enable the subject to fight against the consequences of the losses that define the process of adolescence. DiscussionWithdrawal behaviours occur in various psychic systems, all the more so when they start in adolescence or in early adulthood. The use of digital technologies makes it possible to freeze the course of time and to limit the impact of pubertal transformations and the confrontation with sexuality. For Maxime, the investment in the ideal and in virtual reality is deployed in a continuum between toxicity and creativity. Toxicity can be seen in the completion of the adolescent process and the preservation of a narcissistic omnipotence via an ideal self. ConclusionTeenagers withdrawn into their home do not all exhibit an intensive use of digital technology which can be perceived as trophy at this age. Video games enable narcissistic reinforcement, less threatening object relationships, and a less painful confrontation with loss for the most vulnerable teenagers. Virtual reality and the construction of an ideal can together contribute to the resumption of the adolescent process.