92

How does the model of traumatic hysteria, at the origin of psychoanalysis, apply to contemporary clinical experience of adolescence? The author looks at the paradigmatic value of this model in adolescence by re-examining the theory of seduction in the clinical histories of young girls designated as hysterical by Freud. Like these young girls, today’s adolescent girls display in their bodies the excess of excitement suffered in childhood. Victims of the unconscious passionate tendencies of adults, they try to appropriate the history of previous generations by putting unconscious childhood injuries into words. The author suggests that resolving the castration complex in girls involves working on integrating traumatic infantile sexuality in the interests of the continuity of psychic life. This work continues to be symbolized in culture by access to the maternal dimension in its transmission of the rules that define love.