Archives de catégorie : ENG – Politique et adolescence – 2009 T.27 n°2

Michel Botbol, Luc-Henry Choquet : discipline and transmitting, change and continuity of transmission in the juvenile justice system

A lack of transmission of values, especially those linked to the notion of authority, is often cited as determining factor in juvenile delinquency. On these grounds, successive governments since 1998 have taken initiatives which tend to favor restraint and punishment in judicial treatment of minors. This position runs up against the representations of juvenile justice professionals dealing with delinquency, who see in this development a radical calling into question of the values which have been transmitted to them. Based on their reading of the edict n° 45-174 of February 2, 1945 on juvenile delinquency, they consider that there has been a profound rupture in the mission of this specialized judicial system, which new orientations have transformed from a protective model into a repressive model obliging them to employ values contrary to the ones in which their professional engagement is rooted.
This article reconsiders this presentation of the question and seeks to highlight what nevertheless constitutes transmission and continuity within this movement. To do this, it begins by rereading the edict and its statement of purpose and examines the issue by questioning the psychological and psychiatric models on which the tenets of the rupture are based in order to demonstrate it. This rereading shows, among other things, that it is the evolution of representations of the edict and not the edict itself which has led to this impasse about the repressive and restraining dimensions contained in it; it also shows how a very limited representation of the therapeutic (essentially that of treatment limited to the model of individual psychotherapy) gave rise to the classic conviction that that juvenile justice system suffers from too much clinical influence, as opposed to the « imperatives of discipline ». Thus it is the disciplinary model of help-restraint which has always been promoted by the edict of 45, contrary to what the classic reading of it might lead one to believe.
Referring to the dynamic of problem adolescents, the authors consider that the disciplinary model which combines help and restraint is the most suited to the disciplinary and therapeutic needs of these young people. Calling into question the rupture that some would place at the forefront, they defend the idea that it is important to base the transmission of the juvenile justice system’s disciplinary values on the transmission of this model which, in these conditions, does not require a calling into question of a cherished clinical tradition, as this is also led to adapt its model and its practices to the psychopathological particularities of adolescents treated in this context.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 355-374.

Joëlle Bordet : youth, a socio-political dynamic in full transformation

In this article, we aim to resist representations of youth as effect or victim, by creating new potential supposed to both listen to the adolescent in his singularity as a subject and to analyze what he represents as a socio-political issue for society. This objective pre-supposes new exchanges and new cooperation not only between technician-participants, but within society as a whole.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 349-354.

Olivier Douville : ancestrality and political disarray

First we have to specify in what way war changes the psychic life of young Subjects – most of them teenagers – then we shall have to insist on the difficulties they encounter in their social and professional reinsertion. These difficulties come out because of the reputation they have acquired for being « sorcerers ». We shall examine how this categorization, which is quickly expanding in the two Congos, crystallizes ; we shall also study the effects of this notion on these subjects’ disconnection from the usual logics of alliance and filiation.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 329-348.

Marie-Jean Sauret : adolescence and social bond : the adolescent moment

Under this title, a general theory of the social bond is proposed. It should allow for an exploration of the way a subject manages to find accommodation in a living-together, without giving up its singularity, and without putting the social link in danger. We call the logical moment of this solution the « adolescent moment »; starting from this, we try to propose issues and to extract the pre-conditions for possibilities.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 313-327.

Serge Lesourd : clinical work on adolescence is politics

In this article, the clinical treatment of the act is used to show how adolescent psychopathology attests to the state of the social bond in which the afflicted adolescents are growing up. Extreme psychopathologies are thus viewed as the success of the modern political bond, the free market liberalism which promotes self-fulfillment through performances that enact limitless enjoyment and the refusal of the human malady: castration.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 297-312.

Roland Gori : the art of sweet servitude

The author, following Michel Foucault, describes how the art of governing presupposes the interests of the State are more and more imposed on the populace in the management of existences and private matters. To do this, Power sets up security systems by manipulating public opinion and making a tool of the sciences. “Experts” become the scribes of these new market economy servitudes, which gently and insidiously standardize individuals and populations. Medicine, psychiatry and psychology are, in this article, considered as social practices and the author shows that the re-composition of their knowledge and practices has more to do with an ideological position than with a scientific one.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 271-295.