The containing value of the artistic medium for suicidal adolescents

In the absence of psychic envelopes, and without the ability to invest latent creative potential in adolescents with psychasthenic personalities (ego vulnerability), impulses accumulate and generate tension within the psychic apparatus, giving rise to paroxysmal anguish that leads to cognitive disruption, making death a solution and the afterlife a "place" where life is good. The child seeks to escape his or her unhappiness at all costs, and tries to short-circuit this anxiety-provoking and embarrassing situation by taking his or her own life. Based on a study of four cases in school counselling offices, this master's thesis proposes the art therapy approach and writing workshops as a means of releasing impulses so as not to allow anguish to reach its climax. The framework was designed in line with the vision of Arno Stern, initiator of the formulation and the closlieu. The approach used is the clinical method, based on the implementation of transference/counter-transference mechanisms resulting from the triangulation of the therapist-subject relationship through the medium of art.