ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that a container-contained relationship is established in which the body may become the receptaculum for non-mentalized emotions and/or the mind should develop a capacity of containing the body–and its pulsions–and symbolize it: a body that is initially strange to it. It focuses on the symbolic reordering that takes place during this period of life, the anxieties deriving from this process, and their consequences. The chapter suggests that mentalization insufficiencies are inevitably created–to a greater or lesser degree–during adolescence, the body, playing a central role in the attempt to dominate the anxieties of this period. It illustrates the author’s ideas with a clinical vignette of an adolescent. The new adolescent body emerges from puberty, with its new shapes, pulsions, and potentialities, placing an unprecedented work load on the mind. It confronts the adolescent with a disquieting stranger who must be internally represented to recreate a feeling of familiarity with oneself.
