On the one hand, institutions for adolescents accept all sorts of demands; on the other hand, the extension of delinquency has the effect of socializing crime. Consequently, the therapist may accept situations at the crossroads where the penal, the clinical and the social meet, as in the case of a young criminal we received. There is a jarring of usual clinical practice, as the practitioner must be able to cope with the possibility of recidivism. We give an account of the clinical perspective adopted in this case, one which emphasized fantasy rather than drives, and which seemed to us a more honest way of accepting our social responsibility.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 945-956.
Archives de catégorie : ENG – Enfermement II – 2012 T.30 n°4
Magali Ravit : « love is a bitch » : from the feminine to the killing of the feminine in the violent sex act
Using the clinical treatment of an incarcerated adolescent girl, the author considers how the commission of a violent sex act is a failure of the « work of passivity » leading to the murder of the feminine, what the author proposes to call « femininicide ». This slaying of the feminine is a response to the threat of being invaded by drives, which is strongly felt at the particular time of life which is adolescence. The article retraces the difficulties of Sonia’s clinical treatment during her time in the penal system. The passage by way of the act is envisioned as a scene bringing together and condensing internal psychical elements that cannot be organized or linked and threaten identity with rupture.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 935-944.
Jean-Yves Chagnon, Florian Houssier : the illusory expectation of the demand
This article presents a brief clinical vignette with a young murderer, who had presented behavioral disorders in adolescence and was refused treatment on the grounds that no demand had been made, to discuss and critique the concept of « demand ». The authors give several reasons why it is impossible for these adolescents to verbalize a demand for treatment, while their behavior is in itself equivalent to a demand unconsciously addressed to the other. Theories which hypothesize the specific nature of the language of the act in adolescence are recalled: these allow us to think about the therapeutic settings and arrangements that would be necessary to care for the psychical suffering of these subjects.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 919-933.
Jacques Dayan : understanding delinquency ?
Crimes and misdemeanors are, according to Durkheim, accepted terms that come from the shared conscience. But how is this conscience forged and passed on ? What is the criminal act ? Is every antisocial act due to pathology ? Is there an epistemology common to the field of sociology and psychology ? We will attempt to address these questions and their implications within the field of juvenile justice and the care of minors.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 881-917.
Herminie Bracq-Leca, Marie-Anouck Pitel-Buttez : constructing and offering space/time for treatment in a juvenile penitentiary
Since June 2007, a medical-psychological staff (UCSA-SMPR) has been practicing in the juvenile penitentiary of the Rhône-Alpes region. A psychiatrist and a psychologist propose to review this experience as a way of investigating temporal aspects of treatment and the issues specific to this institutional setting. What are the goals of treatment ? How should we conceive of the care-providers’ position within an incarcerating structure, where treatment is supposed to be an « auxiliary » to a repressive disciplinary system ? How can we enable an elaboration of the subject’s and the institution’s acts ? These reflections are at the heart of a practice wherein professional identity is often mishandled.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 869-879.
Bernard Gaillard : private space of freedom and the vagaries of the evolution of the adolescent subject
This article attempts to analyze issues of the psychical functioning of adolescent delinquents sentenced to Educative Detention Centers. The paths taken, courses of action and emotional links are problematic for these youths who are compelled by their detention to accept being distanced from their figures of reference. To deal with this, should they let themselves be reduced to their acts or to the documents written about them ? Subjects of polysemic acts, they interpret in different ways their relations with their parents. The article is based on clinical interviews with thirty-six adolescents in detention. Work on the link will be necessary, and this work must be threefold, dealing with the family link, the peer-group link, and institutional links.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 857-868.
Luc-Henry Choquet : the influx of delinquent minors and its consequences for education
An examination of the influx of delinquent minors highlights the major trends resulting from the activities of different services concurrent with an increasing penal response. But above all, the results of this examination illustrate the growing diversity of types of delinquency and of juridical and institutional paths that may be taken. The most common case is that of delinquent minors who go through the judicial system once and do not re-offend. On the contrary, cases of delinquent minors who commit the most serious crimes or are « repeat offenders » are more rare. All these cases call for specific treatments carried out in accordance with the characteristics of the minors in question and the underlying psychological dynamic of the actions and their consequences.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 843-855.
Jean-Marie Delarue : inventory of places of confinement
Confinement of children in all its forms does not go without saying. With reference to three major legal texts and using her own professional experience as controller general of environments where individuals are deprived of freedom, the author offers a consideration of the different reasons given for the confinement of minors, the principles which are subject to debate and the different effects of such confinement.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 823-841.
Hervé Hamon : adolescence and the juvenile justice system under the strain of neo-liberalism
This article attempts to examiner « neo-liberal » measures which have put a strain on the Juvenile Justice system, and in particular the negation of the process of evolution of adolescents and the work of supporting them.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 815-822.
Yves Morhain : the paradox of the « confinement » of adolescent et young adult murderers : between destructiveness and creativity
Today’s delinquency, characterized by aggression against the other, the counterpart, which is often sudden, indeed, an immediate, destructive explosion, belongs to the archaic which has to do with the subjective existence of the subject. Judicial approaches offer forms of social re-education and prevention, focused on the transgressive, disorganizing act rather than on the potential for starting over, lead to the « confinement » of these problematic adolescents and young adults, reproducing a stigmatization of the troublemakers within prison walls.
In what turns out to be an impasse, « confinement » can carry out and induce the dynamic of a passage, by establishing frameworks for therapeutic mediation which involve the violent adolescent in a work of psychical re-elaboration and in a relaunching of his subjective dynamic. This opens the way to constructive and creative drive satisfactions which are not just a place of release for these adolescents. These transformative spaces can lead to symbolization and put these youths back into a network of intersubjectivity, a community of exchanges enabling them to turns towards a space of possibilities.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 797-813.