More and more adolescents on the threshold of puberty engage in morbid attacks on their own body, particularly in the form of scarification and burns. Clinical work with these patients shows how serious the disorders are. All these patients have a history of confirmed sexual violence. Most bear the stigma of some real childhood trauma. The others are damaged by potentially incestuous interrelationships that have been woven within the family. The emergence of the experiences of puberty have cataclysmic effects on the psyche. The body begins to stir and seizes power as the privileged locus of expression, for an attempt at figuring, through the act, a psychical issue that cannot yet be elaborated.