Male obesity and incestuality

Objective. - This article proposes to shed light on the understanding of obesity in a familial perspective. Indeed, even if it is an individual symptom, the subject concerned is integrated into numerous groups and particularly into his primary membership group, namely his family. The clinical case-study of an obese teenager provides better understanding of the unconscious issues arising on the intergenerational familial scene. Method. - We propose an analysis of a symbiotic link woven between a mother and her son that is caused by a trauma experienced by the mother, and locked into an unconscious pact and the familial narcissistic contract. It is by using two projective family mediation tools, namely the drawing of the genealogical tree, or projective ``genography'', and the drawing of the subject's dream house, or projective ``spatiography'', that we were able to decipher the unconscious image of the family body in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions, and its evolution in the course of a process of therapeutic care. Results. - We noted a familial functioning built on ties of an isomorphic type, demonstrating unconscious alliances and leaving no room for one member, in this case the teenager, to individualize, thus risking endangering the group. We therefore understood this functioning to be an adaptive answer to the lack of psychic elaboration in relation to the trauma. Discussion. - For want of symbolization, the bodily sphere, like a semaphore, then takes center.stage to signal familial suffering that is unspeakable because it is unrepresentable. Conclusion. - This article can thus contribute to our understanding of the challenges of global therapeutic care that is at once individual and familial, so as to consolidate results in terms of weight loss. (C) 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.