Clinical considerations about traumatic effects of sexual abuse in adolescents

Abstract

Sexual abuse, even when it occurs during childhood, may manifest symptoms only in adolescence by the effect of the resignification of infantile sexuality, characteristic of that vital moment. In cases of child sexual abuse, in the face of the disruption of impulses and identifications that occurs in adolescence, there can be trauma that limits the possibilities of processing the psychic apparatus, even in the course of a psychotherapeutic treatment. The acting out reveals itself in transference, it calls for the analyst to relocate the suffering of his patient.