Using medico-psychological assessments of adolescent criminals, we propose a contribution to the study criminal origins. The adolescent crime translates the «  dead end » of the adolescens process into an actualisation of infantile origins. The importance of criminal violence shows the misadventure of the « separation/individuation » process. The crime is an appeal to representation with agonistic and anaclitic anxiety. It shows an « alienated figurability » (M. and E. Laufer) acting in the crime. The criminal comportment is an answer to a break-down situation of the criminal.
With reference to P. Aulagnier’s research, particularly « auto-engenderment principle », we link the criminal origins to distortions between mother and the child, to defects in the « protective shield », to primary psychic envelopes and to the inadequacy of maternal responses given to signals emitted by the child.