“I Had Twenty-Five Piercings and Pink Hair When …”: Adolescence, Transitional Hysteria, and The Process of Subjectivization

Abstract

The author discusses adolescent and preadolescent development as a transformative experience. The role of the ego ideal in this process, as distinct from the ideal of the ego, is highlighted, and idealization, narcissism, and symbolization are also discussed. Changing representations contribute to what the author describes as a process of subjectivization. An illustrative clinical vignette is presented: that of a 12-year-old girl who developed neurological symptomatology during a crucial period of psychosexual transformation, and whose symptoms rapidly receded after only a few psychoanalytically oriented treatment sessions. The author emphasizes his view of preadolescence as an important passage for the individual’s knowledge of the plurality that characterizes him, noting that the recognition of one’s own internal multiplicity is characteristic of the psychoanalytic process.

• Adolescence
• hysteria
• subjectivization
• ego ideal
• hospitalization
• puberty
• identity
• idealization
• subjectivation
• symbolization
• narcissism
• psychosexuality
• preadolescence