Standing as perhaps the most tangible object of developmental transitions, the
adolescent body – the body in transitions – lies at the crossroads of the biopsychosocial transformations preparing youths for social fitness and adaptation. Early psychodynamic thinkers first captured the implication of the body in transitions when considering the storm and stress of adolescence in relation to psychopathological states. Today, the neurosciences shed new light on the topic from the perspectives of cognitive, developmental, social as well
as fundamental neurosciences. The wealth of neuroscientific data yields a rich and complex picture of mental health and illness in relation to growth factors during the teenage years.
While the breadth of these discoveries can be exhilarating, puzzlement generally arises when
pondering on the clinical pertinence of these scientific breakthroughs.
As testified by fundamental neuroscience on rodents, we first find ourselves in the way our bodies have been handled by our main carers. Throughout childhood, the body is apprehended by significant others, first in the early attachment relationship, and in a somewhat independent fashion, by new attachment figures during adolescence. Critical to contemporary society, however, interactions with peers and different kinds of reflective screens shape the way youths construe both their bodily and mental selves, in more or less
integrated entities. Through the establishment of resilient networks, both at the cerebral, psychological and social levels, youths integrate the complex, context-dependent processes of activation and deactivation to adaptively navigate in the environment.
This presentation will attempt to situate the disjointed parts of scientific evidence on the body in transitions, and articulate them to potentially meaningful observations in developmental psychopathology. Our main working hypothesis postulates that the mindbrain-body triad undergoes a series programmed re-wiring in order to offer itself to being shaped by the social environment. Herein, the nature of psychopathological development rests in the disharmony and relative unpermeability of youth who fail to create new and significant
attachments and social ties. Most interestingly, contemporary resilience research further suggests that preceding socio-relational hardships, embodied processes such as interoception and embodied mentalization in early adolescence may prelude the risk to psychopathology during this key developmental window.