For some teenagers, the accident is a psychic event. He allows the teenager to put in to the test the stakes of the primal. By trying to avoid what Philippe Gutton ( 1991 ) calls the puberty scene, these teenagers consider the scene( of the accident as an equivalent of primal scene. This primal scene has a function of call to the work of the primal such as defined it P. Aulagnier (1975). To illustrate this proposition, I am going to lean on the case of a teenager whom I shall name François and Franck. In the everyday life, whether it is in his family or with his friends, François is always named Franck. He appeared under this name. The case of Franck is especially exemplary, because it is not, strictly speaking about, a pathological case. But the Franck's narrative after the accident, shows us this oscillation between the moment of a scene with a self-killing connotation and, at the least moment the turning round which bases a new desire of living.

The consultation takes place in a center of functional reeducation where I exercise as psychologist clinician-psychoanalyst. This center for children and teenagers take care of the patient's reeducation after very heavy operations practiced in hospitals specialized in the traumatology. If the case of Franck is thus especially exemplary, it is because it was confirmed by may other consultations. With regard to the population of teenagers victims of accidents Franck differs by his ability to introspection and by the fact that he has not multiplied the search for situations of exception after his exit of the center.

I receive Franck ( 16 years) in his request. He comes to see me, because he says that there is only to me that he can confide what he has to say. The nurses do not understand why this boy, " however charming " according to the nursing staff, want to meet the psychologist. It is not thus without some resistances of the hospital staff that Franck succeeds in making an appointment with me.

He asked his parents not to be warned of his initiative. The hospital staff let him know that, given its age, it was necessary to them to warn the parents. Before the appointment, the parents phone me to say to me that they are not sure to understand the initiative of Franck, but they think that after the shock undergone in this accident, he is maybe perturbed. All these steps put off the appointment of fortnight.

The day of the appointment, Franck is very early and sit down so-so in the small part which serves as waiting room next to my office. His legs are surrounded with orthopedic prostheses which which prevent him of sitting down comfortably. After a wait of twenty minutes, when I end with my patient precedent, I receive Franck.

As soon as he enters the office, he says to me: " what I want to say to you has to stay between us. Even my parents are have not to know it. You understand, I do not much have to blame them, and nevertheless I made an enormous stupidity. Everything was well for me, I worked well on the high school, I thought of having a good note in my literature test of the high school diploma. Since a few months, I had a girlfriend. We were always together, my parents were a little bit worried because the literature test of the high school diploma approached. It was the first time that we quarrel with my parents. I suspected although they would not be very satisfied. They were afraid that I do not make a success any more of my high school diploma because I was distracted by my relation with Marie. Nevertheless, I always had very good notes, because, I had much worked all this beginning of year.".

Franck continues to present me his everyday life during some time. I feel that he came to say something very precise, but that he does not manage to speak to me about it. Next to this a little bit idyllic description, I wonder of the state of tension in which he is. Franck manifestly needs to present his commonnesses of the everyday life to prepare what he came to say to me. While the major part of the time of the interview is sold, Franck did not still speak to me of his " big stupidity”

" You see it is so enormous that I do not manage to speak about it. "I point out to him(her) that he needed time to be sure that he could speak to me about it. He seems calmed by my remark and said that he will return next week. No without difficulties with the secretarial department, which is always reluctant considering that other childrens would much more need consultation than Franck , we succeed in finding a second appointment.

Next week, Franck is again present several minutes before the beginning of the interview. . In the same way as the previous time, Hardly he is coming in my office, that he begins at once to speak. :

" Here is I have to explain you everything, you go to understand everything. In fact, I wanted to commit suicide. Since I know Marie, we quarreled a lot with my parents. While they had always been "cool" with me, since I am with Marie, they are afraid of a lot of things. They think that maybe I am on drugs, that I do not work any more, they suspect naturally what took place with Marie. Marie already came home when they were there. They also know that we are together at home when they are not there. They do not understand, you understand, I understand. He smiles in front of the repetition to understand.). It's true, you are about their age old, but it is your profession to understand. In fact as soon as they speak to me about Marie, I get angry, that is no concern of theirs. You understand, I had already had girlfriends, but with Marie it was the similar in no way. We were made the one for the other one. It's true, now she wasted everything. It is maybe a strange girl. It happened one month ago, not I make a mistake, a little more; it is almost two months. No, one month ago it was my accident. Finally, you understood, it was not an accident. Marie had just left me; I was discouraged because never I had got angry like that with my parents. They are really indeed nice, you know. Since my accident, they came to see me almost every day. I wanted to see you now because I knew that they would not be there. In fact, it was not an accident. After the evening, I had a little drunk, at least, I had drunk a lot. I had understood that Marie betrayed me. I thought of all this mortar. I took the motorcycle which my parents had offered me. They offered me this small motorcycle when I had my traffic rules. I wanted to throw myself into the canal. At the last moment, I was afraid, I found that stupid I turned suddenly not to take the plunge into the canal, but I did not see the big rope which was lying about on the ground and fasten the boat. My wheel stumbled above, I am crossed over the motorcycle which fell me above; fortunately, it is not very heavy.

Finally, I regret that half. Naturally, I still have pain, but the doctors said to me that for my leg and my back, if I look after myself well, there will not be aftereffects. We have spoken never so much with my parents and even my sister. My sister knew a little Marie, and I knew her by the way of Dorothee (his siter) that I met her(it). My parents did not think that it was so important with Marie. Now, it is finished, I do not want to hear about it any more. Moreover, my sister talked again of it with her friends and she finds that Marie is really a P.. Sorry, but finally you understand.

When I ask him how he got with his parents, before this accident, he says to me that there were many debates especially between his mother and him because she worried too much. It's true, for one year, we were a whole friends' band which met itself regularly and where we made enormous parties as that of the evening some accident. He stops. Yes, finally that was all the same an accident. With my father we got except naturally from time to time when we discussed very very very hardly, when I drove too fast in the district for example, he said to me that there were children who played and that in this speed, I risked to knock down them. Now, that does not risk any more.

The next week, with Franck 's agreement, I met his parents. They are for the appointment with Franck. The father and the mother appear. Sir teaches the physics chemistry, the mother of Franck and primary school teacher. They are very cooperative and grateful of the supplied help to their son. They have already talked again of the interview with Franck. They describe Franck as a boy without big problem, very honorable pupil, having many friends, maybe too much, they add. For two years, he is more difficult, he does exactly as he pleases. It is the teenagers, they say in east eyes in the sky. Anyway, we were so afraid, and all this has hardly importance. They find a little bit depressive Franck since its entrance to the hospital. They think that it would be good that I continue to see him(it). Franck completely agrees. I shall see Franck until his exit of the hospital and I would have from time to time news, written or phoned during two years. Franck honorably made a success of his school diploma. He hesitated for a long time between studies of medicine or the studies of engineer especially of robotics!!!

The story which tells us Franck contains a certain number of scenes which are almost invariant in all the teenagers' narratives having created a psychic event based on an accident. I indeed think that these accidents have a status of psychic event. We are going to recapitulate the narrative of Franck. I shall begin with the family environment. It is a warm environment where everybody lives in good agreement. The conflicts exist, but are not evacuated. They turn essentially around the link with the friends whom the parents find dangerously intrusive for one year. Although Franck describes Marie as the cause of its suicidal attempt, the parents do not mention her. When Franck will speak about her, they will say that they had not spoken about her not to make him sorrow. We can consider that at the time of the accident Franck is in a conflict between two massively idealized objects. On one side, the family circle which he will question at no time and, on the other side, Marie, the object of the passionate first love. We already note moreover that Marie was a part of the circle of the friends of her sister, but it is necessary to note also how the sister will take sides with her brother against her friend, showing the importance of the family links of attachment.

In the same way as the family circle is very idealized, the relation with Marie is absolutely passionate. This scene of the passionate love is an inaugural event of those which are going to follow. She(it) is typical of the adolescent puppy love. The scene stage of the adolescent first love consists of several elements. The transformation of the family and social links which the environment imposes to the juvenile teenager led to a questioning of the postœdipal identifications. It is at the time of the adolescence that appears the real nature of the oedipal identifications: it is not only about identification in the Ego ideals of the parents. These identifications stemming from the infantile neurosis, are widely structured by he relations to the Ideal ego. The process “adolescens” such as Philippe Gutton ( 1991 ) proposed it is going to question radically these identifications. The object of passionate love of the adolescent first love comes to take the place of the primal identifications. As Freud (S Freud, 1921) had very well described it in collective psychology and analysis of the ego, the object of love takes the place of the Ego ideal. In the particular case of the adolescent first love, it is more the place of the ideal Ego than the place of the Ego ideal which this object of love is going to substitute . We ear it very well in the Franck's narrative: Marie is an idealized object which from a dynamic and an economic point of view presents all the drive intensity inherent in the stakes of the ideal Ego. This first object of love, inevitably passionate to allow the teenager to intend the intensity of the libidinal drives towards an other one on one hand, and on the other hand, this object, even if he is often lived as an intruder by the teenager, protects him from the psychic breakdown bound to the questioning of the parental images and the parental imagoes. Marie's treason, on which we have not enough information comes to double " the imaginary treason " of the parental images the teenager of which discovers all the limits. Marie's treason on which we have not enough information comes to double " the imaginary treason " of the parental images the teenager of which discovers all the limits and also the compromises which he had refused to see since the oedipal drama.

The adolescent first love has a function : the creation of the scene where will be actualized the relations with the objects of love chosen outside the family space. The lost of the the object of the first love creates this background of the necessary nostalgia so that the following objects of love never reach this ideal perfection inherent to the first object of love. In the case of Franck, as far as the first object of love remains infiltrated by the family objects Marie is a distant knowledge of the Franck's sister), the object of passionate love is not released of any incestuel risk. It is certain that this link even distant with the sister strengthens the assignment of Marie as a substitute of the ideal Ego. We saw that the links of Franck with his family are certainly high-quality of anaclisis but themselves manifestly idealized. We can understand in the speech of the parents and in that of Franck the survival and or the resurgence of these idealized links. He is certain that the accident, in this case, reactualizes the dimension idealized of its links.

First element: the small motorcycle is a present of the parents. This present constitutes for Franck a current representation of the inheritances. By using him as an object with mortal potentiality, Franck stages the scene of the break which he lives. We are in a typical moment when what I named the primal scenality (B. Duez, 2000,2002,2005,2006), that is all the potentialities of psychic links with the close psychic environment, turns around under the shape of the obscenality (B. Duez, ibidem). It is the whole scene itself that acts as an object for Franck. By this staging, he calls on stage the primal scenality. We can notice this is successfull if we judge it by the frequency of the visits of the parents in the center of functional reeducation.

The second element : Marie, she is too, through the sister, in connection with the primal scénality. It is not excluded that Marie's treason is bound to the fact that herself is in a situation of treason. If she is the object of love who is going to tear away Franck from the family ideals and from the family scenality, then she will be treacherous with regard to the sister of Franck. If she gives up by fear of this treason, she is a treacherous with regard to Franck.. To protect herself from this situation, Marie goes to another object of love which is going to allow her to maintain a good-enough self esteem.

The third element: the alcohol. During the narrative of the accident, the drunkenness is, on one hand, a representation of the intensity of the drive dynamic is actualized, on the other hand, the alcohol allows Franck to described himself as in a trance. According to his narrative, he is in a way a spectator of his own accident: with regard to the violence of the shock and the intensity of the sufferings, he speaks about it in a relatively untied way. This position to be spectator of his own accident participates of the reversal mentioned above with regard to the primal scenality. This scene where he would attend his own death has to be understood, by reversal, as the turning round of the primal scene where the child attends it's own creation.

This turning round is decisive, because it shows how the link in the death comes to establish the base of a new work of the primal. The primal scene, staging the sexual intercourse of the relatives who create the child, assign this last one to a membership primal and shared with it's parents. When the adolescent process comes to question the postœdipal identifications who supplied the representations of membership during the period named latency, the preservation of the links of membership is made by the recognition of a property universally shared by all the human beings whatever is their sex: the mortality. By actualizing by the accident a scene of death, Franck, gives a second chance to the link of membership: we are similar because we are all mortal. The confrontation at the risk of death is, from this point of view, a reaffirmation of membership in the humanity. I have never met a teenager, whether it is in consultation or in the everyday life, who , one day or other, have not asked to himself or herself the question of its suicide. This question is a logical question as far as she allows the teenager to join a link in the humanity and in the society. In the case of Franck, what differs it is the intensity of this probation: from an imaginary, fantastical scene, this scene is actualized in the Reality of the accident. This actualization by acting is bound to the intensity of the links to the idealized images which confronted Franck with a situation of radical psychic antagonism on which this scene is built. The suicide was an operation of resolution of the antagonism. This new work of the primal had consequences, for example, on the professional choices of Franck (medicine or mechanics-robotics), choices which include elements of identification to the father articulated in the scene of the accident and its consequences.

In the narrative of the accident which Franck makes, we can notice that it is him who makes the decision to give up committing suicide. He has this very cleaver word " I wanted to commit suicide, but I did not want to die ". We shall note how Franck wants to join the community of the mortal beings, but does not want to die at this moment. We are typically in this link of building a new membership by the assertion of its mortality and by the renunciation in the suicide. This is true all the more as the thought and the individual act of the suicide is another exclusive property of the human race. The thought of this suicide attempt must be understood in this multifactorial dimension.

The thought of the suicide is a representation turned round of the membership of a subject to itself. It is an inversion of a scene initiating the adolescent process: the autobegetting in the presence of the other one and more than other one. As such, this scene belongs to the category of the primal, if we use this notion as P. Aulagnier (ibidem) or if we use it from the conception of J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis in their article: primal Fantasies, fantasies of the origins, and origin of the fantasies (J. J.B. Pontalis, on 1964 Laplanche and). From the point of view of the conception of P. Aulagnier, the dimension of the autobegetting is based on the work of the primal. J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis attribute the emergence of the primal fantasies to the psychic activity which accompanies the onanism. Contrary to what is often insisted, I think that there is a direct link between these two conceptions. The limitation in the psychic activity bound exclusively to the onanism restricts the understanding of the dynamics of the primal fantasies.

If we summarize the three main primal fantasies: seduction, castration, primitive scene, each of them has this property to confront the subject with a figure (figuration) of the other one or more than other one:

the subject autobegets itself psychically in the sexuality by other one of the seduction

the subject autobegets himself or herself psychically to the sexual differences by other one of the castration

the subject autobegets itself psychically as subject in a history as an other one of the others who create it during the primitive scene.

In the narrative of the accident of Franck, we see that, when he gives up turning round the primitive scene in a scene of autobegetting in the death, even perhaps monobegetting as proposes it B. Blanquet (B. Blanquet, on 2008), the failure occurs. He does not see the rope which is lying about on the ground. We shall note the opposition between the excess of seeing of the position of the subject in the primitive scene(stage) and " the failure of seeing the rope ", symbol of the attachment, which is the cause of the accident. During the narrative of the accident Franck specify that the motorcycle falls on him. This fall is the cause of the fractures of legs. The question of the limitation of the seeing, the object-present of the parents which falls on him causes fractures, shows the presence of the castration, too turned around, because attached not to a dimension of sexual difference, but to a problem of attachment / separation. We are very then in the configuration of a castration included in terms of primal. The renunciation of the suicide, the non-perception of the rope, the fall of the motorcycle on his legs are so many indications which show the psychical working through of the problem of the castration in a direct tension between the psychical process of the primal such as conceived by P. Aulagnier and the staging of the scene of this mortality shared by the whole humanity. This last property makes the link between, on one hand the working throug bound to the process of the primal and the infantile neurosis, and on the other hand the emergence of a new relation to the fellow men as the difficulties between the parents of Franck and Franck himself about these links with the friends show it.

The link with the friends, the relation with Marie, knowledge remote from the sister allows to suppose that if on the occasion of the adolescence the oedipal problem is reactualized, that of the complex of the intrusion (J. Lacan, on 1938) is it also. The fellow man loses for the teenager his intrusive potentiality to become the support of the alliance. Let us remind that according to J. Lacan the recognition of the fellow man is made on the background of the destructiveness murderess intended for the intruder who deprives the subject of the maternal object. If we add with D.W. Winnicott (1956) that, from the point of view of the child, it is the child who creates the mother, we understands best the wishes of destruction of the intruder who initiates the complex of the intrusion. It is only in the one second time, feared of losing the love of the mother, that the child will give up his fatal intentions compared to the brother (or sister) intruder. It is on this background of renunciation which the child will understand that if him and the intruder have the same object it is because they are similar ones. With adolescence that whose child becomes aware it is that the whole of humanity have the same not-object, the same attribute, the same destiny: death. The reflection of Franck “I wanted to commit suicide, but I did not want to die” is completely interesting and exemplar of the psychical conflict at work. To commit suicide is to turn round auto-begetting in its opposite. To die is to give up the new scene of the life that adolescence opens towards the adult life. To give up committing suicide, on background of refusal of death, it is to establish the link between the originating scenality, scenality former to the primitive scene and the social scene whose Freud in the interpretation of the dreams (S. Freud, 1900) had underlined the major analogies with the processes of representability and the scene of the dream, I will add to the psychic scenality (B. Duez, ibidem).

This work of the teenager, on background of intrication of mortality to the life plan by the handing-over in work of the primal, enables us to understand what work with the psychoanalytical groups highlights at knowing that the framework (setting), the social services are the agents of this antiquated work. When the psychic conditions, the social conditions allow it, this work of the primal remains silently related to the institutional and social executives. When the conditions are degraded, we are unceasingly constrained to point out the framework setting) or the rules of the framework (setting) . The politicians of the societies being in crisis do not fail to do it. At this point in time the framework shows what it owes with the compulsion to repeat and in the long term with the death rive. It was indeed the discrete work of the death drive to maintain motionless this framework (setting) so that object and subject can be found again enough in the same place. It is the use by the frame (setting) of the tendency to the immobilization bound to the death drive that allows that the subjects join rules and laws shared secretly. The link of groupal, institutional and social frameworks (setting) use the anaclisis on this immobility. It is because the human beings know all, by a knowledge which they refuse, which all have a mortal fate that they based the civilization on the most primitive of all the prohibitions: the prohibition of the murder. Many teenagers, as Franck, the renounces the suicide and base The possibility of auto-begetting in the presence of the other one on the suicide renunciation. This allows the teenager to surrender a system of damage exchange with the other intruder " (eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth as the lex talionis) to join a dynamic of anaclisis on one another and more than one another, even the desire with: " the other-similar-and-different ".

The narattive of the accident by Franck is a true condensation in the moment of a scene of the whole adolescent process which goes from infantile primal to the adult citizen. It is most probably the quality of the family links I would say: “just too good” which leads to the intensity of the staging of the scene. This production is particularly illustrating of the swing teenager between on the one hand the risk of break down related to work criticizes radical imaginary ideals and symbolic parental ideals and the idealization of those, and on the other hand subversion by the desire which is induced by the object of the first love because it comes to replace ideal ego, heritage of infantile, put at evil by adolescent process.

In conclusion, if this example is remarkable by its paradigmatic side related to the intensity of the stakes, it puts in scene psychical conflicts that any teenager crosses. My work in this center of functional rehabilitation, while enabling me to meet many injured teenagers, showed me that generally the accident, and even certain suicide attempts all (not), are generally anything else only the building of a new scenality which brings the familiar ones to be repositioned around the teenager. This create a new redistribution of the narcissistic contracts such as R. Kaës defined (1993) them from P. Aulagnier and a passage of the drive renouncing (R. Kaës, 2007). I named this new distribution the drive renunciation shared as common re-statement of prohibitions, rights and duties. The loss of the love of the parents, the fear of hurting them, even of destroying them, the uncertainty of their capacity to get new objects of love outside the family field are typical fears teenagers. the new deal of the narcissistic contracts and the access to the shared drive renunciation allow all and each to establish a place in a new differentiation. When the psychic event of the accident is not enough to open this scenality, that is mostly when the primitive and\or cumulative traumatism is too radical, as for suicide attempts, we can then see the teenagers increasing the number and the severity of accidents with repetition, traffic accidents, accidents related to the practice of the extreme sports and/or violent ones and, of course also, suicide attempts repetition. When the imaginary and symbolic system reorganization of family setting, but also sometimes of the institutional frameworks and settings cannot take place through the psychic event of the accident, the teenager incorporates in him what these settings owe with the death instinct. It waits of a Real relation to the death which it organizes the conditions of its survival. Thus we pass from a shared construction of a subjective, intersubjective and social history, with an assignment in an inexorable destiny: the destiny of the man to death. We pass then from the history to the tragic side and the tragedy. In the history of Franck, we can understand very well how this risk exists when he hesitates to give up the object of love (Marie) which betrayed his hopes (the hopes that Mary becomes a perfect narcissistic substitute with ideal ego). To reconquer it could very well have fallen under the tragic configuration potentially present in the adolescent process and whose paradigm is certainly: “Romeo and Juliette”. The reading of these traumatic accidents in terms of scenality psychic, in terms of creation of psychic events, allows us to work these situations very differently with the teenagers and with the families. In the psychoanalytical work, this reading allows the psychoanalyst to invent variations of " the inner psychic configuration of his inner psychoanalytic setting ". This reading opens the field to new internal, subjective and intersubjective alliances. It opens especially a new deal of the conscious and unconscious alliances which recognizes different places which each occupies after the crossing of what Philippe Gutton calls juvenile scenes and that I consider as the necessary updating of the primal scenality which introduces and conditions the adolescent psychic process.

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Summary

This article leans on the narrative of a teenager hospitalized after an accident caused by a full of risk behaviour. It shows how the accidents bound to risky behaviors during the adolescence are often unconscious actualization by the teenager of primal scenes. These scenes are often built by turning round the scenes of the primal fantasies related to the human fate to death These accidents have a function to build a new deal of the primal identifications and a new sharing of the psychic positions of each in the family circle and also in the social surrounding.

Key words
risky behaviours, primal fantasies, psychic function of the death during adolescence, the accident as a psychic event, function of the adolescent scene .

Bernard Duez
Psychologue clinicien-psychanalyste-psychodramatiste
Professeur émérite Université Lyon2

mail : bernard.duez@univ-lyon2.fr

Translated by the author.