Porosité, rigidité, équilibre : formes et interactions des enveloppes dans la médiation par l’écriture

Abstract

ObjectivesAdolescents who have been placed in foster homes are confronted with the challenge of reconstructing themselves from a traumatic childhood history. The placement also confronts them with often unstable or incoherent environments. Negative life events and inconsistencies in the environments then participate in the development of pathologies based on early traumatic relationships. These pathologies can lead to agitation and ego splitting. This phenomenon results from a disruption in the formation of psychological and environmental envelopes. When these envelopes cannot ensure their protective and representative functions, the emergence of the processes of thought is complicated. From a psychotherapeutic point of view, group therapeutic activities based on writing seem particularly adapted to the mobilization of envelopes. These group activities are made up of a diversity of envelopes whose interactions can facilitate the remobilization of symbolization processes, the emergence of the containing structures of thought and its contents. Indeed, the relationship between the subject and these envelopes (group, materials, narrative…) contributes to the lateralization of the transference. These envelopes also lead to the formation of a containing group and psychic space. MethodsWe conducted a therapeutic writing activity with seven adolescents entrusted to the child welfare services and placed in foster care. The activity was designed to provide the adolescents with the necessary material for a free and undirected creative process, based on the rule of free association. We use the methodology of the single case study and the analysis of contrasted cases, combined with a clinical analysis of group and symbolization processes. The aim of this analysis is to highlight the interactions that exist between the psychic envelopes and their implications for the representative processes and evolution of the subjectivity of these adolescents. ResultsRomane, David, and Karene are three adolescents who participated in the writing therapy. The study of the individual processes and interactions between the subjects and the group show that the ruptures, rigidities, and porosities in the envelopes can be interpreted both as disorganizing phenomena of subjectivity, but also as prerequisites for the consolidation of a containing function, which subsequently enables the emergence of thought processes. DiscussionThe envelopes take different forms during the therapy, revealing the organization of these adolescents’ subjectivity and the processes that also shake up the group space. A primary capacity for porosity seems to favor the emergence of transformative processes, while on the contrary, the absence of this capacity seems to durably inscribe the subject in a position of passivity and withdrawal from the relationship. Moreover, the simultaneous presence of the malleable characteristics of the medium and the adaptability of the therapist contribute to the promotion of these adolescents’ representative capacity via narrative processes. This narrative capacity also allows for links to be formed between the adolescents within the group, a source of appeasement and of possible co-creativity. ConclusionThe various envelopes that constitute therapeutic writing make it a particularly relevant medium with populations entrusted to the child welfare system. These envelopes constitute a variety of sources of symbolization.