Many young people from the poor suburbs are going through many problems, both familial and social, which raise the question of a new form of adolescent malaise in our contemporary society. These young people are not always open to therapeutic work. This raises many specific questions about the necessity of inventing treatment arrangements halfway between the social and the therapeutic, a way of meeting these young people at the space-time frontier that defines them: the suburb, this intermediary zone where minority demands and identity deficits converge.
Archives par mot-clé : Violence
Maria Fatima, Olivia Sudsbrack : project phoenix : collective effort at the protection of adolescents through the mobilization of family and institutional resources
At the request of a juvenile court judge from the Tribunal of Brasilia, the department of Social Psychology of the federal University as set up a project with two hundred youngsters the justice system and their families. Entitled “ Project Phoenix ”, this work aims to reinforce the capacities of families and adolescents to protect themselves against the violence and the hold of the favela, or slum. Exchanges within the group foster recognition of each person’s resources. This article written by Maria Fatima Olivia Sudsbrack, professor and initiator of this project, analyses the process itself through more than a year with these youngsters and their families. Through her first-person account and her analysis, she opens up some paths for French educators.
Teresa Cristina Carreteiro : brazilian youth, institutions and change in underprivelaged groups
Young Brazilians, living in troubled neighborhoods marked by the drug trade, experiment with violence and are often fascinated by it, even more so in that they are seeking recognition. To obtain this, they can not count on social service institutions, which have often tended to stigmatize them while the drug trade welcomes them. But some people know how to avoid this trap and overcome the conditions of their difficult living conditions. Thus Daniel, who with the author, elaborated his life story for several years, succeeded, thanks to support from differents sources and in spite of a life filled with obstacles and dangers in building his house, holding down a regular and legal job, helping to establish itself and changing his life by establishing other bonds of solidarity and conviviality.
Walter Ernesto de Marques : bandit friendship : youth, violence and masculinity
This article is based on research carried out with youths in a system of semi-liberty who benefit from socio-educative care at Belo-Horizonte in Brazil.
These adolescents live in a bellicose world where the warrior ethos dominates, associated with the idea that manhood has no affect, an imaginary and real construction of the modern world which alienates manhood into violence. The bandit has no friends, friendship being supposed to belong to the territory of the sacred.
The creations of privileged spaces, of dialogue, would help to deconstruct this violent ideal of manhood and its relations of domination so that friendship would not be banished from relationships between human beings.
Serge Lesourd : schreber’s children : the adolescent act in the time of the other’s vacuity
Using studies of Schreber as a starting point, the author highlights one particular part of the paranoiac relation with the Other and others : « the other wants something from me » which is the structural model of human relations in the current civilisation driven by liberalism. This paranoiac relationship with our fellow-men builds a manner of relating to the act which offers total realisation of enjoyment, restricted only by impotence. The subject then finds himself inscribed in a relation with fellow-men which is made of violence, faced with the hindrances that everyday life in society imposes on thrill-seeking. The human relations turn into violence against the persecutory fellow-men. Teenagers, more than anyone else, bear witness to this new kind of social bond.
Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°3, pp. 613-626.
Véronique le Goaziou, Laurent Mucchielli : contribution to the analysis of « violence of minors ». matters handled by the judge for children
This article gives the early findings of research on legal briefs carried out in one jurisdiction belonging to the Paris metropolitan area regarding violent infraction committed by minors. Using dossiers treated by judges for children, the author first proposes a typology of these instances of juvenile violence (« shady » violence, virile violence, neighbor-on-neighbor violence, intra-family violence), with the reminder that more than 80% of these involve people who are known to each other. Then the authors analyze some salient features of these minors’ profile and background: sex and age, family situation, place of residence and school history. In their conclusion, the authors explain that this research reveals instances of low-intensity violence occurring among people who know each other, for very diverse and very classic reasons in adolescence, as a result of conflicts that seem not to be new, but which are increasingly treated as legal issues (judicialized) in our society.
Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°2, pp. 415-429.
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.
Pascal Minotte : internet addiction and other prophecies of decline
Considering the important place they occupy in youth recreation, video games and the way they are used have become unavoidable objects of study. Among the questions raised by this research, two are particularly sensitive because of their ideological and political implications. The first is the over-investment these games can generate, sometimes called « Internet addiction » or « obsessive passion ». The second, revived every time incidents occur involving minors, focuses on the possible exportation « Into Real Life » of the violent content of some games. In this context, the Walloon Institute for Mental Health carried out at the request of the Walloon Minister of Health, Social Action and Equal Opportunity (Belgium), an inventory of what is known about these two issues. The article provides a summary of this work.
Adolescence, 2012, 30, 1, 89-99.
François Lebigot : jeunes militaires français à l’épreuve de sarajevo
Les nouvelles missions de l’armée française (maintien de la paix, interposition), particulièrement éprouvantes psychologiquement, ont montré chez les soldats, les plus jeunes comme ceux qui avaient déjà une carrière derrière eux, une étonnante capacité à dominer leur violence. Les situations qu’ils ont eu à affronter en Bosnie de 1992 à 1995, décrites ici, réunissaient pourtant toutes les conditions susceptibles de conduire ces sujets à des débordements pulsionnels incontrôlables.
On peut en conclure que les jeunes gens qui rejoignent l’armée, au sortir d’une adolescence souvent difficile, sont à la recherche d’une discipline, d’un ordre, d’un idéal qui leur permettent d’accéder à une relation pacifiée avec les autres. Pour ce qui est du lieu et de la période considérés, ils ont souvent payé cher cet apprentissage, et manqué de ce fait une réconciliation espérée avec l’humanité.
Marie-Jeanne Guedj : passage à l’acte et urgence : cadre et réseau
À partir d’un nombre important d’urgences psychiatriques à l’adolescence (540 moins de 18 ans en 2001), le lien du passage à l’acte à la situation d’urgence à l’adolescence est exploré : la psychiatrie moderne ne tend-elle pas à définir une psychiatrie de l’acte ?
Celui-ci dépend de causes internes à l’adolescence mais aussi de l’environnement. Dès lors, le travail face à ces situations se définit à la fois par la constitution du service d’urgence comme cadre interne et à la fois par le développement d’un réseau externe.
L’évolution d’un service pour accueillir l’urgence psychiatrique à l’adolescence peut ainsi être décrite.