[Child psychiatry chronicles, psychology in brief]. / Chroniques de pédopsychiatrie, brèves de psy.

To work in a hospital is to believe in poetry, to grasp with wonder all the details that tie each person to an existence. However far-fetched they may be, they also contribute to enriching our belief in a world that can always be rewritten beyond the determinisms that would claim to assign tragedy.

[Adolescence and identity peregrinations]. / Adolescence et pérégrinations identitaires.

When we work with children and teenagers, we are always open to their singular questions about their subjective foundations and their future. Questions of identity are increasingly present at the heart of our fast-paced modern world. Two clinical extracts from psychotherapies show that this quest for identity is dealt with on a case-by-case basis, while respecting each individual's temporality.

[Reconversions of hysteria]. / Re-conversions de l'hystérie.

What has become of the hysterics of yesteryear? Despite the evolution of nosographic categories, their symptoms cannot be reduced to this, and they invite all clinicians to listen to the power of their words to express the effects of the unconscious. Disappointed lovers, worshippers of knowledge, they challenge those who would try to squeeze them into overly restrictive diagnostic boxes, to silence their truth. For they embody in their tribulations the effects of language on the being, a metonymy that they wear on their bodies. Their posture invites us to listen to the singularity of each case by highlighting the dignity of the symptom.

[Modernity and turmoil of adolescence]. / Modernité et désarrois de l'adolescence.

Teenagers sometimes show us, in quite dramatic fashion, the upheavals they face as they embark on the difficult journey towards adulthood. Removed from parental directions and ideals, they need to follow their own subjective compass, in a social relationship where anxiety is ever present. Far from being indifferent to the world, they offer a lucid insight into its flaws and false pretences, in a distraught search for meaning. In this state of vulnerability and internal disarray, they can be exposed to the risk of fanaticism and deadly beliefs which promise a resolution to the chaos of their existence. The use of screens as a place to hide behind, segregational communities, toxic pathways, like an artificial veil on the world, are all dangerous solutions to which the teenager may turn.

[Body marking in psychosis]. / Les marquages du corps dans la psychose.

Patients with psychosis speak of an uneasy relationship with their body. Between feelings of too little and too much, for them it is a matter of trying to suture an image which is not always unified, a body which they are not always sure they have. The attentive clinician will attempt to support the solutions of each psychotic patient to maintain their body, beyond the death drive which pushes them to tear it apart.

[Taking the time to understand to move on from therapeutic deadlock]. / Prendre le temps de comprendre pour sortir de l'impasse thérapeutique.

Psychotic symptoms of the type elementary phenomena and hallucinations can be pacified thanks to an individualised response. Teamwork is essential for fighting against the feeling of therapeutic deadlock. This article presents the therapeutic effects of the institutional care of a child with psychosis within a day hospital.

[Clinical consequences of modernity]. / Des conséquences cliniques de la modernité.

When they receive patients in their treatment centre, clinicians witness symptoms which are sometimes very closely related to the inclusion within hypermodernity of hyperbole and instantaneousness. A study of the question of contemporary violence through an analytical explanation of the relationship between the subject and the object.

[From "memorable man" to "calculable man"]. / De "l'homme mémorable" à "l'homme calculable".

It is important that the "refuge" which the institution often constitutes in patients' eyes does not allow caregivers to forget to question their practice. In these times where fast "therapies" are available, we must not distance ourselves from the precepts of psycho-analytical work and leave the subject the time to develop.

[Louis, anxiety faced with the other and language]. / Louis, l'autre et le verbe.

Faced with a child's psychosis--and its occurrences--the psychologist must remain humble. Team work will help to modify the massive transference which sometimes binds the psychologist to the psychotic subject (erotomania or persecution).

[Love or the abyss in psychosis]. / L'amour ou l'abîme dans la psychose.

Every clinical encounter is the occasion for new questions and the questioning of a practice which is neither linear or uniform. With Madame K., love and all its variations can sometimes be a way of entering the psychosis. Through its aspect of impossibility, love can therefore crystallise a delusion.

[The unbearable reality of the child: Münchhausen's syndrome by proxy]. / L'enfant réel ou l'insupportable: le syndrome de Münchhausen par procuration.

The hypothesis of Münchhausen's syndrome arises through a clinical situation. The patient is unable to consider the question of "being a mother". The child takes the place of a real, unbearable object, which she evacuates or which can disappear. This maternal suffering requires psychotherapeutic care.

[A young girl with an inconsistent identity]. / Lola, une adolescente sans assises.

Lola experiences herself as "too beautiful" and attemps to invest a body that she ignores, the meaning of which she gauges only through the adornment. In her quest of men that might teach her being as a woman, this teenager ends up loosing herself. Lola acts "as if" in placing herself in the posture of object of the mother or object of men.