86

With the help of a clinical situation, this article proposes to reflect upon the trophic potential of adolescent recourse to scarifications. These actions constitute an attempt to take control of past traumatic experiences which are reactualized at the moment of adolescence. With its supportive function, particularly on the sensory level, and thanks to bonding work of erogenous masochism which is strongly solicited by these scarifications, the body offers itself as a fantasmatic projective surface which can favor the possibility of figuration and open the path toward symbolisation. The dimension of externalisation of this recourse to the act contains a potential message which needs only to be received and interpreted. If such is not the case, there is a risk of it becoming a compulsive behavior.