Suicide Girl: suicidal process and sexuation. The case of a female adolescent

Authors

  • Francisco Ojeda Güemes Universidad San Sebastián

Abstract

Scholarly literature on adolescent suicide has suggested that more men complete suicide and more women attempt it. However, these epidemiological differences should not be taken for granted. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s concept of sexuation allows one to read the singular ways in which a male and a female subject deal with the biological body and the subjective drifts that emerge from it. Within this context, this article aims to address the relationship between suicide and gender using Lacan’s sexuation theory. In doing so, it discusses a case study on the suicide process of a 16-year-old female adolescent who made a suicide attempt in her school. The socio-biographical trajectory of the adolescent, I argue, allows locating the psychic work of sexuation and how the body becomes a surface of resistance to normative mandates attached to gender.

Keywords:

suicide, sexuation, adolescens, gender

Author Biography

Francisco Ojeda Güemes, Universidad San Sebastián

Mg. Psicología Clínica, mención Psicología Clínica Infanto Juvenil, Universidad de Chile. Psicoanalista asociado a la Nueva Escuela Lacaniana, NEL-Santiago. Académico de la Facultad de Psicología,  Universidad San Sebastián y Director Diplomado Prevención y abordaje de los procesos suicidas en jóvenes y adolescentes, Universidad San Sebastián.