Kristeva, Adolescence

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ADOLESCENCE, A SYNDROME OF IDEALITY

Julia Kristeva

Translated by Michael Marder

and Patricia I. Vieira

1. POLYMORPHOUS PERVERSITY VERSUS ADOLESCENCE,OR THE THEORETICIAN VERSUS THE BELIEVER

The recent centennial celebration of Freud’s Three Essays on theTheory of Sexuality (1905) has brought to my awareness a majorfact likely to shed light on an experience familiar to parents andto psychoanalysts: “polymorphous perversity” of the child hasovershadowed adolescence.

Of course Freud’s successors have not failed to highlight thecharacteristic traits, particularly the difficulties and the sufferingthat occur at adolescence both in the development of a givensubject as well as for his or her family. Added to this is the im-

pact of adolescent malaise on the culture of a society and its era.It nevertheless seems to me that our approaches are sidesteppedby the two extremes of the psychosexual chain: to begin with thenarcissistic polymorphism of the newborn child incites epistemo-philic curiosity; and at the end, the paradigm of neurosis withits optimal completion in genitality.

We know only too well how fruitful this schema has been.The narcissism of the “polymorphous-perverse-and-theoretician”child has supported both the Kleinian revolution, which at thesame time distanced itself from the Freudian model to develop

Translated from La Haine et le Pardon (Hatred and Forgiveness)by Julia Kristeva.

Copyright © 2005 Libraire Artheme Fayard. The English language edition of La Haine et le Pardon is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

Psychoanalytic Review, 94(5), October 2007 © 2007 N.P.A.P.



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the idea of cruelty in relation to a “precocious Oedipus com-plex,” endowed with an “object” even if only partial, and thesubsequent exploration (in the wake of narcissistic disorders) of “false-selfs,” and “borderlines” psychosis with its lack of psychicrepresentation. As a result of all this, psychoanalysis today hasbecome not only an exploration of desire, but also a way of treat-ing thought. As for the neurosis paradigm, it has established theimportance of object relations, which is perhaps the sole founda-tion for the ethics of psychoanalysis. For indeed, whatever thetheories of object relation may be, is it not an optimization of this relation that the psychoanalytical cure aims to achieve, andis it not by this creative bond with others that we are able to deter-

mine when the cure is finished and the well-being of the patienthimself attained?We are forced to notice, however, that this framework is

disrupted by the adolescent crisis: I would even say that adoles-cence explodes it, exposing its shortcomings and opening up asa consequence new problematics that could perhaps help us sup-plement the classic Freudian framework.

In light of the adolescent malaise and the psychosexual de-velopment model in Three Essays which I’ve just summarized, Iwould like to posit the following binary schema in which my rea-soning will play out today: Let us oppose the polymorphous per-verse child dependent on partial pleasures, who “wants to know”

and whose thought develops thanks to his sexual theorizationwith the adolescent who idealizes the object relation to the pointof succumbing to what I call “the malady of ideality” whichpushes him to relish both the fantasy of an absolute Object aswell as of the fantasy of its vengeful destruction. The polymor-

phous perverse theoretician versus The adolescent believer: The di-chotomy I’m proposing obviously obeys heuristic objectives forclarity but, most often, the two models overlap.

Shall I be more specific? Polymorphous perversity is domi-nated by instinctual drives that are inevitably polymorphoushence dependent on the satisfaction of erotogenic zones, on theprimary incestuous relationship (maternal seduction or the mere-

version) and on the ultra-precocious oedipal challenge ( pere-version). The drives’ agitation is satisfied and perlaborated by de-nial-Verneinung (“I don’t want mother” = “I want mother”) type



ADOLESCENCE, A SYNDROME OF IDEALITY 717

fantasies, and it’s in the continuation of this negativity thus liber-ated that Freud maintains that language is constructed with itsgrammatical synthesis and logic. This construction of languageleads the way to questioning (“Who am I?”, “Where do I comefrom?”, “What do I want?”). The founder of psychoanalysis longexplored the emergence of representation as an act of denyingdrive.1 Though he didn’t leave us with any specific study on ques-tioning , Three Essays provides us with an essential explanation:The polymorphous perverse child, wondering where he comesfrom, creates sexual theories based on the key question: “Wheredo children come from?” Questioning and thinking are simulta-neous activities here.

In short, polymorphism is at the crossroads of the auto-erotic drive and the quest for an object relation—the object of desire becomes an object of language and thought; the polymor-phous perverse child is a subject of epistemophilic curiosity; the

polymorphous perverse child is a seeker of knowledge.The case is very different at adolescence, or more exactly,

the “polymorphous perverse seeker” is overshadowed by a newtype of speaking subject who believes in the existence of the eroticobject (object of desire and/or love). He only seeks because he isconvinced that it must exist. The adolescent is not a researcher ina laboratory, he’s a believer. We are all adolescents when we areenthralled by the absolute. Freud did not preoccupy himself with

adolescents because he was himself a firm nonbeliever, the mostirreligious human that ever existed. Faith implies a passion forthe object relation: Faith is potentially fundamentalist, as is theadolescent. Romeo and Juliet are excellent examples of this; I’llcome back to them later.

However, because the sadomasochistic nature of thesedrives and desires is inevitable, the belief that the Ideal ObjectExists is continually threatened. Thus the passion for the objectrelation is reversed, giving way to punishment and self-punish-ment. Accompanying the passionate adolescent in his processionis the triad disappointment–depression–suicide, or a more re-gressive, somatic form such as the anorectic syndrome or even,

if the political context is ripe, the destructive tendency of theself-with-the-other which I call the kamikaze syndrome.

I will assert then, that the adolescent is a believer of the object



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relation and/or of its impossibility. Thus formulated, the questionimplies a parameter that we have trouble taking seriously despiteLacan’s efforts: This parameter is ideality (Lacan calls it: the sig-nifier).

2. WHAT IS THE IDEALITY SYNDROME?

The adolescent Oedipus complex is violent because it operateson the carrier wave of idealization. The adolescent subject whosestatute is rooted in polymorphous perversity, separates from theparental couple by replacing it with a new model. In doing so,the narcissism of the ego, tied up with its ideals, overflows the

object, giving way to the amorous passion specific to the drive-ideality intrication.

Freud wrote that in idealization, “the object is treated as theego proper and that therefore in amorous passion a largeamount of narcissistic libido overwhelms the object.”2 I myself hold that the intensity of this new satisfaction is procured thanksto something not sufficiently brought out in Freudian theory,which is to say the overlapping drive/idealization splice and theinclusion of the object in narcissism in the guise of belief. Thesubject thus acquires the certainty that the id exists—the “id” : a satisfaction acquired by the joint means of purity and transgres-sion; the “id” : an elation experienced as an absolute destiny

which erases the original Oedipus complex, a rush toward newparadises. Images, ideologies, different forms of knowledge andexistential models are all brought into play to shore up an ideal-ized narcissism unfurling over others and which surpasses instrength all former ideals.

Ideality dominates the adolescent unconscious: Adolescentdrive is structured not only as a language but as an ideality. Itconcerns a decisive moment in the construction of the speakingbeing whereby the ideal of the ego and the superego take theregredient path and permeate the unconscious drives to thepoint of dominating them. This permeation of the drive by ideal-ity culminates in the idealization of the satisfaction due to the ideal

object.Melanie Klein pointed out that idealization from very early

on in life is defensive because it cleaves the “good” from the “bad”




object, in order to defend itself against the latter and the ego’saggression accompanying it. I will add that as defensive as it maybe, adolescent idealization nevertheless induces a perverse typeof exponential pleasure. Indeed, the growing dynamic of ideal-ization stimulates and increases the pleasure the subject feels onboth sides: “you will take pleasure in the good and the bad” , dic-tates the ideality syndrome.

Let me sum this up as follows: Departing from a biologicaland cognitive evolution, the polymorphous perverse child is ca-pable of a decisive mutation: this is the junction between hislibidinal drives and the fantasy of absolute libidinal satisfactionderived from a new object on which he projects his narcissism

supported by the ego’s ideal. This junction is accompanied bythe belief that the parental couple must be surpassed and evenabolished so that the adolescent subject can escape into an ideal-ized, paradisiacal variant of absolute satisfaction. The Judeo-Christian paradise is an adolescent creation: The adolescenttakes pleasure in the paradise syndrome, which, conversely, canalso become a source of suffering if absolute ideality turns intocruel persecution. Because he believes that the other , surpassingthe parental other, not only exists but that he or she provideshim with absolute satisfaction, the adolescent believes that theGreat Other exists and is pleasure itself. The slightest disap-pointment of this ideality syndrome casts him into the ruins of

paradise and heads him toward delinquent conduct. Here, thepolymorphous perverse subject takes back the reins, but “underthe lash of pleasure, that pitiless tormentor” (to paraphraseBaudelaire), all childlike innocence gives way necessarily to sado-masochistic satisfaction which draws its violence from the sever-ity of the ideality syndrome itself and which commands the ado-lescent: “Your pleasure must have no limits!”; as we say inFrench, “jouir a ` mort.”

3. BELIEVERS AND NIHILISTS

We understand that, structured by idealization, adolescence yet

constitutes the malady of ideality: Either the adolescent lacks ide-ality or in a given context his ideality fails to adapt to his postpu-berty drive and thus to his need to share with an absolutely satis-



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fying object. Adolescent ideality is necessarily demanding and ina state of crisis, for the drive/ideality intrication is constantly inperil of disintegration. Adolescent belief inexorably mixes withadolescent nihilism. Why?

Remember that the adolescent escaped from childhoodwhen the subject persuaded himself that there was another ideal

for him, either a partner, husband or wife or a professional–polit-ical–ideological–religious ideal—an ideality already establishedin the unconscious. The adolescent unconscious is an ideality.

An absolutely satisfying other must exist— and does exist: Such is theadolescent’s faith and unconscious passion. But, in reality, therecannot be an absolutely satisfying other. Clearly, adolescent fa-

naticism doesn’t resist reality’s trials or the assault of the adoles-cent’s own drives which at best weaken the belief and at worse,turn it inside out. Because that exists (for the unconscious), yet“he” or “she” disappoints me (in reality); thus I have no choicebut to be angry with “them” and seek revenge: Vandalism is whatfollows. Or else: because that exists (in the unconscious), yet “he”or “she” disappoints me or I miss them; thus I have no choicebut to take it out on myself, which explains why mutilation andself-destructive behavior follow.

This fanatic belief in the existence of an absolute partnerand absolute satisfaction stabilizes the subject while thwarting themovement of psychic representations amongst the diverse psy-

chic registers that characterize what I’ve named the “open struc-ture” of the adolescent,3 due to a softening of the superego un-der the pressure of his desires. This stabilization is, however,very dangerous if it is true that belief, according to Kant, is a “sufficient form of consent only from a subjective point of view,but which we hold as insufficient from an objective viewpoint.”4

This is much like saying that a belief is a fantasy of maximalsatisfaction and of inexorable necessity; it can even be fatal (a recurrent term in fiction concerning adolescent passion) fromthe subject’s perspective. In other words, situated halfway be-tween the imaginary scenario enacted by desire and madness,the belief is not in itself delirious but harbors madness as a po-

tentiality. The disentanglement of drive and ideality under thepressure of an increased drive frustration encourages this poten-tiality for madness. It does not come as a surprise that the ado-




lescent, structured by this propensity for belief, is easily carriedaway by enthusiasm, romanticism and even fanaticism. He canfall prey to the defensive explosion of mad speech and acts leadingto schizophrenia, not only because of this relaxing of psychicauthority but even more so because of drive stimulation fueledby the ideality syndrome.

And yet, while we can see a failure of the ideality/drive splice,normally the adolescent invests this splice and uses it, I wouldsay, trivially, necessarily by projecting himself body and soul intohis stabilizing belief in the existence of an ideal Object. His be-lief in it is as solid as a rock; nobody believes more than he thatthe ideal Object exists. The adolescent is a mystic of the Object.

When this fantasy fails to direct the subject toward a processof sublimation (school, profession, vocation), the failure of theparadise syndrome inevitably leads to depressivity which takesthe form of common boredom: “If I don’t have Everything, Iget bored”; and opens the way to delinquent conduct rooted inpolymorphous perversity, which attempts to relieve the bore-dom. Polymorphous perversity thus regains its rights “under thelash of pleasure, that pitiless tormentor,” who instigates the de-linquent behavior. But this conduct is merely the flip side of themalady of ideality, since the need for ideality persists and sup-ports the aggressive behavior; it in no way signals its abolition orits ongoing destruction.

Thus drug addiction abolishes the conscience but fulfills thebelief in the absolute of orgasmic regression within the experi-ence of hallucinatory pleasure.

Anorectic behavior breaks with the maternal line and revealsthe young woman’s battle against femininity, yet this auto-destruc-tivity, this death-wish operates to the benefit of an overinvest-ment of the “hard-lined” body, which echoes back to the fantasyof an absolute spirituality. Through this fantasy the entire bodydisappears in a Beyond, heavy with paternal connotations.

4. ROMEO AND JULIET: THE IDEAL AND IMPOSSIBLE COUPLE

On the other hand, the perpetuation of the paradise syndrome,notably in the bourgeois couple has become a pillar of the estab-lished order maintained by hackneyed television “soap operas”



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and magnified by “gossip” magazines. These spectacular variantsboth commercial and commonplace of an excessively secularizedparadise conceal an intrinsic religiosity; they make up the visible,secular face of a deep-rooted need to believe, nourished by ado-lescent culture—a religiosity inherent to social organizationwhich lay in abeyance until the recent crisis of ideologies andconflicts in the Middle East. In the conclusion of my “FeminineGenius” trilogy I tried to show, notably with Rousseau,5 how the“couple” became the miracle formula intended to create a bifacesubject guaranteeing both the parent–child and state–citizen bond.6 This Rousseauian ideal is, of course, untenable,but it can only be contested through debauchery, perversion and

crime—as in the case of Sade. In his own way, the adolescentattempts the same when the paradise complex fails and pusheshim toward gang rape and vandalism.

Although ideality permeates the id in the adolescent psyche,this idealization differs from one individual to another in re-sponse to familial and cultural contexts: we’re familiar with thesuperego-like severity of certain adolescent models and how thisis a source of guilt. We also know about those who suffer froma lack of frameworks in which to orientate themselves, whichleads them to regress and transgress. Yet whatever the differ-ences, the biopsychic clock inevitably determines in all of thema particular phenomenon which I will stress: The shadow of the

ideal cast on the adolescent drive crystallizes the need to believe. Theideal because impossible couple such as Adam and Eve, Danteand Beatrice at the firmament of heaven and Romeo and

Juliet—is a prime example of this ideality, which has punctuatedour civilization. And despite the fact that these couples sufferand grow weak, they continue to contitute the adolescent ideal.

I’ve already suggested that such an idealization of satisfac-tion due to an ideal object is elaborated and lived out as a re-venge against the Oedipus complex and the parental couple.The ideal adolescent couple constructs itself in the place of theparents. In our culture, Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Romeo et Ju-liet (1591 or 1594) is the paradigm of this fantastical construc-

tion.The mutual idealization that two adolescents share is experi-

enced as a rejection of parental authority: Romeo and Juliet’s




love for one another is all the more fueled by the fact that theydefy the Montague and Capulet clans who hate one another andengage in a merciless feud. This young couple’s ideal is defiantand secret as all adolescent acts aspire to be. Moreover, the re-ciprocal idealization of the two lovers is perceived by all as a “fatality.” What is fatality ? I suggest we consider the inevitabilityof this pleasure fulfilling attraction which we call “fatality” to beprecisely ideality’s permeation of drives and the domination of polymorphous perverse drives by one or more models proper tothe ideal Ego. The result of this is that the adolescent believesthat his or her pleasure is legitimate and justified. Several linesof these Shakespearean adolescents resonate with Marlowe: “We

cannot love or hat of our own free will. For our will is governedby fatality.”7

Nevertheless, as Shakespeare’s genius powerfully reveals,the belief that the Ideal Other inevitably exists is fragile and hasa difficult time withstanding the assaults of the adolescent’s la-tent polymorphous perversity remaining from childhood. Hereare two examples, which serve to prove this. First, beneath theexalted discourse of the lovers one perceives sadomasochist de-sire. Juliet literally cuts up Romeo’s body at nightfall: “Come,gentle night / come, loving, black-brow’d night. / Give me myRomeo; and when he shall die / Take him and cut him out inlittle stars . . .” (III. II. 9–25). As for Romeo, his jealousy emerges

as a fatal pleasure in stabbing his male rivals: “O I am fortune’sfool!”, he cries out as he stabs Tybalt and Paris. In the end, thisparadisiacal ideal of the couple turns out to be impossible. Ro-meo and Juliet die: In 1591 or in 1594 Shakespeare was nolonger an adolescent. He had left his wife Anne Hathaway andhis son, Hamnet, had just died. Romeo and Juliet, his ninth playin the second cycle of his lyrical masterpieces (along with A Mid-

summer Night’s Dream), reads as an adieu to the adolescent belief that the Ideal Object exists.

5. A TRAP FOR THE ANALYST

It is here that the analyst gets caught, for many analysts tend tostop at the erotic or thanatic symptom forgetting ideality, whichcontrols the symptom from the unconscious. How do we take



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into account the fact that the unconscious of the adolescent be-liever is constructed as a high-risk ideality?Civilizations commonly referred to as primitive have long

used initiation rites to assert symbolic authority (divine for theinvisible world, political for this world here) and to justify theacting out of what we would qualify today as perverse by condon-ing initiatory sexual practices.

In our Western culture, notably in medieval Christianity,mortification rituals and excessive fasting channeled the anorecticand sadomasochistic behaviors of adolescents, and in doing so,either downplayed or glorified them.

In yet another way, this time secular, what seems to me to

be an imaginary elaboration of the adolescent crisis is the birthof the European novel shaped as it is around the adolescent charac-ter.8 The young page serving his Lady is a recurrent trope of the courtly romance in which a complex range of homosexualrelations, more or less developed, are played out. Does psycho-analysis innovate, and if so, how does it avoid the pitfall of stabi-lizing the couple in marriage, that temporary happy end of thebourgeois novel? Even today, popular literature continues todraw from this narrative logic developed during the Renais-sance. Even hard-core sex fails to break out of this logic and iseasily assimilated into it.

Compared to the diverse ways of dealing with adolescents

that have preceded us, we might wonder if psychoanalysis, withits emphasis on attentive listening and transference, innovates.And if so, how?

It is the analyst’s job to listen to the adolescent’s need tobelieve and to confirm it: If adolescents come to us it is becausethey need us to recognize their ideality syndrome. We must artic-ulate and share our understanding of it if we are to comprehendand accurately interpret the delinquent behavior of the adoles-cent in his crisis as a source of extreme jouissance—-simili- para-dise. Only later should the analyst attempt to point out the nega-tive aspects, the Oedipus or Orestes type revolt, of this behavior.

In other words, only the analyst’s capacity to see through

the idealizing course of adolescent drives will allow him to pro-vide a credible and effective transference—and thus be capableof metabolizing the need to believe not through acting out but




through the pleasure that comes with thinking, questioning andanalyzing. Sharing the ideality syndrome specific to the adoles-cent gives the analyst the possibility of weakening the patient’sresistance and guiding him through an analytical process againstwhich adolescence generally rebels.

The religious need, replaced throughout the twentieth cen-tury by ideological enthusiasm, served and continues to serve asa means of legitimating the ideality syndrome. It’s no coinci-dence that alongside the adolescent malaise which so worriesmodern society (to the point of spending handsome sums to in-augurate a “youth center/home” for teenagers with great pomp)

we see religion making a comeback, often in bastardized forms(sects) or with a fundamentalist twist (encouraging the deathdrive to shift into high gear in the name of an ideal). In thiscontext, adolescence can perhaps be seen in terms of its possibil-ities, though this outlook is contingent on our ability to accom-pany the teenager in his need to believe coextensive to the im-possibility of this belief. In doing so we would be better able tointerpret the variants of our civilization’s new malaise and thisrenaissance of the “need to believe.” A need which we ourselvesshare, for there is in us, a perpetual adolescent.

NOTES

1. See Negation, 1925.2. See Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921).3. See J. Kristeva, “The Adolescent Novel” in New Maladies of the Soul , Colum-

bia University Press, 1997.4. Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 2, 3.5. See The New Heloı se, 1761 and Emile, 1762.6. See Julia Kristeva, Colette, Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 315 f.7. Hero and Leander , I, pp. 167–168.8. See Julia Kristeva, “The Adolescent Novel,” in New Maladies of the Soul , Co-

lumbia University Press, 1997.

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Kristeva, Adolescence

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