The assessment of the severe pathology in adolescence. some hypothesis on trauma and dissociation to understand the borderline organization

This paper aims to reflect on health and psychopathology in adolescence from a developmental perspective based on the Relational Psychoanalysis, the Attachment Theory and the Infant Research. Health is considered as connected to the adolescents’ personal subjectivity and so as the possibility to experience their own existence as opportunity of realizing their individual potentialities, that make them unique, during their personal growth. Health is related to mental integration, flexibility of the mental functions and of the personality organization, possibility to elaborate conflicts thanks to capacities which work as support to development (intrapsychic conflicts considered as relational conflicts and not as pulsional ones), resilience useful to face potential traumatic experiences (traumatic because they disown the individuals’ specific developmental/evolutive needs) without structuring pervasive dissociative processes. Psychopathology is considered as strictly connected to the diagnostic, referring to PDM, and discussed with reference to levels of organization: a specific focus is dedicated to borderline level of organization and to dissociative processes and their roles in organizing the borderline levels of personality organization.

Keywords: Adolescence, psychotherapy, health, trauma, dissociation, borderline level

Cesare Albasi, Valutare la psicopatologia grave nell’adolescenza: alcune ipotesi sul trauma e la dissociazione per la comprensione dell’organizzazione borderline in "RICERCA PSICOANALITICA" 1/2011, pp 25-59, DOI: 10.3280/RPR2011-001004