Adolescent Conference 2025 -Transformation of Bodily Symptoms to Symbolic Meanings

Adolescent Conference 2025 -Transformation of Bodily Symptoms to Symbolic Meanings

Facilitated by Dr Louise Allnut & Dr Jeanne Magagna

A Primitive bodily experience, especially in in infancy, are retained as vague, sensory images, as unconscious phantasy rather than symbols. For some adolescence who find the transition into adolescences deeply disturbing, having physical symptoms, having a problem with the body, is preferable to the emotional experiencing of anxiety.

Dr Louise Allnut will demonstrate how working in a multidisciplinary team, offers an opportunity to think about the early developmental phase at both a physical and psychological level.

Dr Jeanne Magagna will demonstrate, using the adolescents dreams, how beneath the young person's body and gender identity, there are unconscious phantasies in relation to parental fugues and siblings. When these unconscious dynamics are brought into awareness, bodily images transform.