Le maternel en souffrance. Ombre de la mort sur le corps adolescent

Abstract

Considering the link between the feminine character of suicide attempts in adolescence and the specific issue of maternity, the authors suggest a "cultural roundaboutness" showing that, in some African societies, teenager girls are exposed to culturally structured death fantasies before becoming mothers. In occidental culture, death matter is theatrically expressed by suicide attempts whereas, in African societies, death is ritually played and thus contributes to overcome the infantile components and to allow maternity. The authors underline two points of the occidental culture: first the delayed access to maternity and also denial of death. These two points are supposed to play a particular role in the individual development since they psychically echo with the possible difficulty in elaborating castration which is a necessary step to build the genital feminine dimension of personality.