ABSTRACT
In recent decades, the theme of sexual diversity and transsexualism has become increasingly central. Through the discussion of two clinical cases, this contribution will illustrate the theme of adolescents’ experience of identity and body when defining themselves as transgender.
We are faced with an enigma that challenges our diagnostic categories, as well as the canons on which psychoanalysis of gender identity is based. For many of these cases, we must ask ourselves: has the pubertal conflict produced the gender defensive situation through which the patient defends him or herself against decompensation, or is it instead a deep nucleus of gender identity that has produced the pubertal conflict and hatred for the sexed body, in which the patient does not recognise him or herself?
A number of these adolescents tell us about an idealised and fantasised body, the illusion of a perfect body, other than self, which can be considered as a defence that leads to an arrest in the processes of figuration and symbolic reorganisation of the sexual body. This work intends to reflect on how these defensive processes lead to preventing the development of new self-images in adolescence, also referring to an aesthetic identity that takes the place of real identity.
