The pubescent body on the scene: rites of passage, adolescence and anorexia

Abstract

If in traditional societies rites of passage function as a symbolic treatment for the reality of puberty and preparation for entry into adulthood through the establishment of new modalities of engagement with the social Other, in modern and hypermodern societies the ideals offered by culture already they no longer manage to metaphorize enjoyment. It is there where the Other reveals itself to be most inconsistent that the teenager increasingly finds himself thrust into the urgency of creating unique solutions. In this article, we propose that anorexia triggered during adolescence can emerge as one of those unconscious solutions that the subject resorts to in the face of unbearable anguish, of uncontrollable and excessive enjoyment that breaks out in the body during puberty. In view of this, we also bet on the fruitful dialogue between psychoanalysis and cinema, bringing to our debate some fragments of the film Tem um vidro sob minha pele (2014), by brazilian director Moara Rossetto Passoni, which tells us the story of the character Beatriz and of his anorexia between the ages of eleven and eighteen. We believe that Passoni’s invention, in this filmic work, puts on stage valuable elements and articulations that will allow us to extract consequences for approaching in the clinic the impasses of the subject in anorexia with his body in the face of the invasion of puberty.