This article’s central hypothesis is that the central conflict of Lisa, a young bulimic woman, is transformed by fantasies of omnipotence. Lisa’s bulimic behaviors imply a loss of boundaries between self and not-self, leading to violations of the law. Her incestual complicity with her mother prompts us to explore issues of personalization and differentiation characterizing the subjectivation-work of an adolescent girl and its impact on the construction of her femininity.
This article deals with the vicissitudes of the integration of the feminine in delinquent adolescent girls, especially those who are sexually delinquent, who overinvest apparently masculine aspects, such as narcissistic phallic features. As a result of early narcissistic trauma, these subjects struggle defensively against the integration of passive positions associated with harmful passivation and feminization.
This article focuses on incarcerated adolescents from immigrant families. Analysis of their discourse shows that they feel rejected by society, are ashamed to be themselves and suffer from identity issues. Legitimizing their speech within the context of a support group helps them become receptive to an encounter and enables them to make sense of their transgressions and their history. In this way they have been able to make the psychic adjustments necessary for elaborating their cultural compromise, which helps them to be reconciled with their multiple affiliations.
The specific character of girls’ delinquency seems to result more from the impasses and practices of the judicial system and other institutions, which seem particularly gender-based. Using a clinical study of a young woman who has been a delinquent since the age of sixteen, we will try raise awareness of an ethics respecting the subject : an analysis without a prior prescription, which is as faithful as possible to the event, the way it was experienced, and the context in which it occurred.
For a long time, female violence has seemed like an epiphenomenon, a monstrosity, or at least an anomaly. This article will attempt to understand the way that female violence is viewed today along two lines of tension. On the one hand, there is an increasing liberation of women, but in a context of strong condemnation of violence. On the other hand, there continues to be a smaller proportion of girls and woman who commit violent acts compared to males, despite the greater equality between the sexes.
Statistical studies raise the question of gender differences in the juvenile justice system. Data concerning the causes, judicial procedures, and nationalities of minors in detention show differences between the way males and females are treated, giving a more complete picture of the striking impact of multiple instances of abuse on the delinquency of girls under the age of eighteen.
Compared with their male peers, girls commit few delinquent acts. But crimes and misdemeanors are not the only expression of violence and transgression that girls must deal with, either actively or passively. The various forms raise the question of whether certain modes of violent or non-violent transgression are specific to females and how they should be handled by the social welfare and judicial systems. This semiological puzzle is an open field for new research.
Adolescence, 2018, 36, 1, 13-21.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7