Object Presentations in Adolescence

In 1905, Freud discovers infantile sexuality and in his third essay of the volume Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he deals with the “transformations of puberty”, while also emphasizing the function of the eye as erogenous zone at puberty, in line with his discovery, in the very first essay, of the Schautrieb or scopic drive. The author of this article explains how these Freudian advances are confirmed in 1915 in Instincts and their Vicissitudes, following the introduction of narcissism in the psychoanalytic theory and the writing, in the same year (1914), of the text Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology and his “externalized gaze”. Given that in 1915 the scopic drive develops into an actual partial drive, at a time when Freud is interested in its vicissitude as a consequence of the inadequacy between drive and object, wouldn’t a return to its function during adolescence become necessary? Thus, an inquiry into the relationship between adolescence and representation (1905) allows us to distinguish between several types of object in Freud. Lacan’s invention of the object a, as well as his hypothesis concerning the “presentation of the object”, aim for a solution to the Freudian dilemma, and therefore they have a particular clinical pertinence in the case of adolescents.