OF WHAT CRISIS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT IN CONTEMPORARY ADOLESCENCE?

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON PSYCHOANALISYS AND EDUCATION

Abstract

Derived from contemporary discursivity, adolescence can be understood as the effect of a political and social production which draws a difference to the infantile. Recurring to Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical framework, the article presents a theoretical debate on the subject of the crisis of adolescence from the perspective of psychoanalytical studies in the field of education. Therefore, it underlines the change in position toward sexuality as a mark of the transition the adolescent passes through, having consequences to social bond. We seek to demonstrate here that the critical character of the adolescent experience is not restrict to biological and individual modifications; rather it refers to how such a structuring experience of psychic constitution is signified by contemporary social discourse, quite often leading to psychic impasses and suffering. By shifting the question of adolescence from the mere individual scope and as determined by organic changes, we indicate that the notion of crisis reveals something regarding education in modern world and the consequences of techno-scientism as a response which obliterates adult responsibility addressing the speech to adolescents. Within this context, it is relevant to highlight that the adolescent wanderings seeking for new subjective significations may find the school territory a place to be experimented without being quickly captured in a closed and often excluding meaning. The Freudian idea of the impossible, inherent to the act of educating, points to an ethical position regarding the challenge concerned in the schooling experience.