Radicalités adolescentes dans la société contemporaine : à propos du processus d’idéalisation mortifère

Abstract

ContextThe hyperliberal society in which contemporary youth evolves exacerbates an unbearable experience of passivity for adolescents already weakened by a personal and intersubjective history strewn with pitfalls. ObjectivesThis article presents the following hypothesis: the repercussions of this new malaise in culture are actualised in the various forms of adolescent radicalism, in which the common intrapsychic process of which is the mortifying idealisation. MethodThe analysis is based on doctoral research conducted with ten adolescents aged 16 to 20 who showed various behavioural and/or ideological manifestations (eating disorders, substance abuse, video game addiction and an attraction for religious and/or conspiracy ideology), and draws on both classic and contemporary psychoanalytical and sociological literature. ResultsThe author invites us to think of current adolescent problems in terms of the exacerbation of an experience of powerlessness, both on an intrapsychic and intersubjective level. The process of mortifying idealisation would then constitute a bulwark against the narcissistic collapse of adolescence at the cost of an avid quest for an idealised object. The power granted to this ideal object, guaranteeing the maintenance of the phallic edifice, would prevent the elaboration of the work of the feminine and the access to the sublimation of libidinal and aggressive drive in the adolescent process. ConclusionThe theoretical-clinical reflections elaborated in this article lead the author to a discussion on the epistemic gap between the political spheres and the psycho-social field in the treatment of adolescents with an appetite for radical Islamist ideologies.