The "adultescent" and the generalized child in the 21st century clinic

Abstract

Modern Science emerged with an auspicious universalizing promise: 'ALL equal, free and fraternal!' This never came to pass and what remained was the ALL of the standardization of individuals, the foreclosure of subjects and their suffering: "The anguish of the generalized proletarian" (Soler, 2001). But capitalist discourse did not stop at 'All proletarians (anguished)!': it included 'All children!'. Regarding the ignorance in which the body is maintained by the subject of science, Lacan said: "Should we highlight the consequence of this by the term generalized child? (...) This is what signals the entry of an entire world onto the path of segregation." (LACAN, 1968 [1967]/2003) "How can we ensure that human masses destined to the same space, not just geographical (...) remain separate?" (Ibid) A current form of segregation is by age group. The elderly are stigmatized as unproductive and as someone who can no longer enjoy commodity objects like young people: the "gray plague", for some. Will there also be consequences for younger people, since old age is everyone's destiny? This is where the extension of adolescent time comes in. The term "adultescent" began to be used in tabloids and designates an adult person with a lifestyle typical of adolescents. Contrary to a pathologizing and developmentalist furor, Quinet (2009) reminds us that "adolescence (...) is the paradigm of the subject's impasses when confronted with the impossibility of a complete relationship between the sexes." But adolescent time also has its historical and discursive aspects. A market segment dubbed “kidults” helped toy sales in the US increase 37% in two years, to $28.6 billion in 2021. Capitalism ties the subject to commodities as exclusive objects of enjoyment, but the symptom shows its margin of freedom: “truth individualizes what discourse collectivizes” (SOLER, 2015). And the psychoanalyst listens to and interprets the ‘new symptoms’. Sustaining a symptom opens the path of his own desire for the subject, “assuming that, thanks to the know-how of a partner known as a psychoanalyst, he takes up the question [that comes back to the subject from the place from which he expects an oracular reply] (...)in the following form: ‘What does he want from me?’” (LACAN, 1950/1998). The question remains about the importance of an act, in the realm of politics, capable of creating a discursive regime that confronts capitalist discourse.

Keywords: generalized child, segregation, old age, psychoanalysis, Lacan.