Lyard, D. (Paris). ‘Le corps et la “redonne” archetypique de l'adolescence.’ (The body and archetypal rebirth in adolescence) in  Cahiers jungiens de psychanalyse, no. 55, 1987.

This paper is based on a fascinating series of dreams of a boy entering puberty who was deeply enmeshed in a mother complex, in danger of becoming a puer aeternus.

The dreams were presented in a long series to the Children's Section of the Society of Analytical Psychology in May 1987, and a few have been selected for this paper in order to make room for theoretical considerations. Denise Lyard reflects on the specific importance of the body in the analysis of adolescents; she found that puberty and adolescence are analogous to the first year of life in the number of biological changes that take place: the first time when the body of the baby is born, as it were incestuously, from the body of the mother; the second time, in adolescence, the biological thrust towards sexual maturity sets in motion archetypal processes that produce a second birth, a redonne, or giving back of a chance to separate from the mother's body on the symbolic level. Such a process can only come to fruition with the activation of the father archetype. He separates, he is the representative of the spirit, but he also has to do with the body and the instincts, while forbidding incest. Quoting Jung, Lyard shows that spirit is also a dynamic instinct; therefore, what bestows upon adolescence its critical character is the violence of the instinctual dynamism of the spirit.

In order to gain consciousness and full possession of his or her own sexual body, the adolescent seems to have to reconquer the body of the mother. Thanks to new archetypal dynamics, the ego can revise its position, and the confrontation with the parental archetypes is particularly intense. A powerful reactivation of the mother archetype allows access to the instincts, fiercely repressed in René's case, but, in order to separate, the young need the intervention of paternal, masculine factors.

The author selects telling images from René's dreams to trace his development: the last monkey of a savage breed that escapes its hunters in