In adolescents who are incarcerated, psychical ways of functioning based on dependence and passion for the act, are actualized in the setting of the detention center. This article deals with the psychical adjustments of these adolescents and the forms that their violence takes when it emerges. Violent acts thus appear to be a defense against the excitation of the drives induced by “incarceration hyperstimulation” and the relational and institutional promiscuity inherent to the setting of the juvenile detention center.

Adolescence, 2018, 36, 2, 333-348.