50

Suicidal overdose, running away from home, and scarification are frequent behaviors in adolescence. Like other break-away behaviors, we understand these as corporeal embodiments anchored, in both form and substance, more on the side of psychic productions than passages-to-the-act that are known to short-circuit thinking. These behaviors are linked in part to a conscious intent that embodies the erasure, or emptying of inner tensions out of oneself, “getting a handle on them,” which is synonymous with control, the transposition of psychic suffering into palpable, visible percepts and the attempt to have an effect on people around the adolescent, in order to obtain recognition and favorable rearrangements. They are also unconscious and very condensed, carrying out attempts at figuration which give form and substance to psychic representations that the subject suffering in his identity tries to avoid or cover up. Most of the adolescents in question cannot put this suffering into words. In order to prepare them for psychic work, we think it is necessary to gradually ally emotion with representation and act with speech. This can be through therapeutic acts able to foster re-binding, offered as supports to figuration. We give some examples from the experience of our staff, which for the past 15 years has been organizing brief hospital stays for suicidal youths in a specialized unit.