100

Based on research conducted with 51 preparatory class students, the author reflects on the consequences of the radical disappearance of free periods and spaces conducive to the emergence of the feeling of boredom in preparatory classes and the grandes écoles, from the standpoint of the psychic functioning of the subjects concerned. The article shows in particular how the recourse to activism, which can be observed in the latter, is deployed in correlation with a defensive abrasion of their existential questionings and fantasy activity, leading us to wonder about the effectiveness or absence of the elaboration of conflicts specific to the end of adolescence.