ADOLESCENCE AND ACTING OUT

Introduction

Situations of sexual acting out in adolescence establish a dilemma within the families concerned. These are adolescents who have committed acts of sexual assault/rape on prepubescent victims under the age of 5 who are part of their fraternal environment. This theoretical-clinical work of psychoanalytical inspiration having been carried out in a judicial placement institution for young adolescents aged 12 to 18, the question of the inclusion of prohibitions in the transgenerational line within family functioning and placement will be present at the side of the psychoeducational care. It is thanks to the alienation of the mirrored institution, via “raw objects” (Granjon, 1990), to the family functioning that it integrates, that these raw objects find there a means of projecting what is encrypted in the dynamic in question. Institutional analysis is what has made it possible to study the negative pact and the transgenerational. I will elaborate on these aspects in another article.

Working operational hypotheses

By bringing a reflection around the transgenerational, we make some assumptions:

• The sexual acting out in adolescence on a child less than 5 years old is encouraged by the hindered modifications of the negative family pact (Kaës, 1993) in adolescence.
• This negative pact is characterized by the cleavage of the transgenerational (Durastante , 2009) cumulative trauma (Khan, 1976) of which the adolescent is the bearer: the cleavage that can explain the inability to return the repressed in connection with transgenerational cumulative trauma and the cleavage making a comeback via the acting out in adolescence.
• These reorganizations come to agitate, via the acting out, the fusional character of the mother-child bond (Govindama) in an incestual and incestuous family dynamic (acting out in fraternal bonds) (Racamier, 1995) as well as the complicity of the third party in the insufficiently good continual seduction.

Alienation, crisis and differentiation in the transgenerational:

The transgenerational is in transit in the family as in a departure lounge in an airport that each generation crosses carrying a part in its suitcases with the hope that one day, a transgenerational object will be able, with the help from a companion or not, to relativize what is “radical” (Kaës, 2014) in this luggage.

The crisis in the functioning of the couple and the family in the transgenerational:

In a couple, the basis is to deal with transgenerational and intergenerational transmissions by clarifying certain ideals, in order to preserve the unity of the bond. Indeed, these transmissions may include old traumas that the ancestors have experienced. According to A. Eiguer (2007), some couples bond with the aim of solving together what could not be done alone before, under the background of transgenerational transmission that can be assimilated to untreated radical negativity (Kaës, 2014). In the couple, sometimes one of the companions takes the risk of authorizing the other to question the unknown of a trauma transmitted in an undeveloped mode. The Negative integrates itself into it in all its ways, demanding defenses, insinuating changes and dogmatizing if necessary to protect the link. When a crisis (a change) occurs in the couple and in the family, according to R. Kaës and Ch. Joubert (2007; 2011; 2018; 2023), it can have a constructive aspect. The crisis in this article is linked to two events: birth and placement. Adolescence not being really authorized in the family organization, only placement conferred access to changes within the family. Indeed, there is a mother-child fusion which knows no end with the complicity of the third party described as absent in the clinic of the sexual act. Birth, for its part, is a crisis because it is experienced in a physically and psychologically violent way for the couple and for the child, synonymous with destructiveness and not a prepared and progressive separation.

The alienation of adolescents in the transgenerational:

Through various readings on the transgenerational, the negative pact and childhood experiences, we asked ourselves questions about the function of parentifying family dynamics (fusional mother to fill the lack of the phallus and father accomplice of the fusion and not playing his function of third party according to Freudian works) in the specificity of the acting out committed. Indeed, in situations of recurrent acting out and on reading the works of S. Freud, we ask the question of female oedipal castration from the angle of the lack of the phallus that the child, born a boy, comes to fill. Moreover, in this clinic the father is emotionally and physically absent in the couple bond. This is how the transgenerational transmissions of family history pass through the mother-child fusion. The father only has the role of progenitor and becomes an accomplice of the mother’s inability to defusion.

The work of R. Durastante (2009) underlines the adolescent’s inability to become a full-fledged individual in view of the alienating debt. Based on the work of J. Bleger (1966), the author defines the group as bringing together all human links that subsist over time with a common archaic framework of “non-me” (Joubert & Durastante, 2008; Durastante, 2009). According to the author, this “non-me” finds its source in the first mother-child bonds in the sense of the work of J. Bleger and the traumas of family history transmitted in a transgenerational manner. We can say that these family history traumas can be in the form of traumatic experiences and representations. Alienating debt highlights generational traumatic history. According to A. Eiguer (2007) sometimes the legal norm is difficult to follow in certain families. An ancestor having committed an illicit act, haunting the walls causes confusion in the links of filiation. The superego is undermined from generation to generation and a feeling of injustice shows through, undermines the integration of the law and causes transgressive acts. The adolescent who sets up sexual acts is a transgenerational object (Eiguer, 1997) staging these transgenerational traumas marked by incestual or even incestuous scenes in connection with scenes of relational or real mourning. For example, in M, a situation that we will discuss next, we find scenes of incest under the background of relational mourning with an elder who introduced incest into the family dynamic.

What seems relevant to us is to consider the characteristics of the non-elaborated traumatic unconscious experiences and representations transmitted in a transgenerational way to the child. As seen during our missions, young people find themselves the subjects of repetitive battles between their own psychic authorities. The superego tries to frame what family functioning could not control. The id tries to get noticed by activating the incest authorized in the family incestual framework. The ego tries to get rid of the conflict between the superego and the id but does not manage to individuate itself. These battles have repercussions on their actions, their words and their daily lives. The psychic organization is marked by experiences and traumatic representations which do not belong to them but which they must carry to prevent the collapse of the family structure.

• What proves the existence of these traumatic transgenerational transmissions is the mother-child fusion which limits the adolescent to the point of alienating him. The childbirth project reshapes the couple but also the perception of parenthood through different experiences and representations that are made aware in order to be developed in the light of current events. The role of the baby is then to “experience” what could not be thought of through the mother-child fusion.
• Acting out in adolescence is a way to discharge adolescent impulsionality under the background of an appeal to the law in order to differentiate oneself.

Cleavage and Transgenerational Cumulative Trauma

The transgenerational cleavage in the clinic of sexual acting out in adolescence :

The transgenerational cleavage in the clinic of sexual acting out in adolescence is studied as a :

• A transgenerational cleavage in the negative pact of undifferentiation denied: we underline the alienation in the negative pact (Kaës, 2014) of undifferentiation. This pact is jeopardized by the return of primary agony (Roussillon, 2015) when the object which signed the contract disappears (totally or partially). This pact is visible via the placement period for example.
• A cleavage in the act of acting out just like the victim: we emphasize “erasure” during the act of acting out (Berger, 2012). The cleavage is visible through the confusion of the adolescents but also a false-self empathy due to the inability to put oneself in the victim’s place. The confusion finding its source in the confusion of the sexes and generations and denoting generations which mix with the ghosts of the past and the trauma of the act. Author-victim astonishment objectifies the victim and disaffects the link. Empathy is prevented by the failure to take into account the burden of transgenerational transmissions for the author.

Cumulative transgenerational trauma :

What we will call cumulative transgenerational trauma is linked to the repetitive dimension of the transmission of trauma in the transgenerational. We can glimpse this explanation via identification with the aggressor (Balier, 2005). Identification with the aggressor is favorable in the context of the clinic of sexual acting out since it carries a compulsive dimension and an attempt at symbolization in the staging of the action. The author underlines the role of denial to silence traumatic returns as well as its ineffectiveness which leads to acting out under the cover of the cleavage in order to try to unload the incestual maternal imago (in the context of the absence of third party) and to differentiate themselves. The adolescent perpetrator then finds himself in the position of victim because not only is he the puppet of a cumulative transgenerational trauma but also his non-recognition of his own body prevents him from getting rid of his alienating transgenerational role as bearer of the act. When the therapeutic work is established via placement, the objective of separation of the mother-son fusion is not only in the reality of bodily defusion but also in psychic defusion. This work activates narcissistic fragilities and defenses reminiscent of a negative pact of incestual undifferentiation unattainable until now because it protects against a transgenerational agonal collapse.

The impact of cumulative transgenerational trauma on the subject’s acting out:

The cumulative transgenerational trauma of the clinical passage to the sexual act can be highlighted and analyzed via undifferentiation and the negative pact, parentification and the telescoping of generations :

Indifferentiation and negative pact

By linking the lack of differentiation to the negative pact, we underline the few/no intrapsychic bodily landmarks of the adolescent who has difficulty representing his mother’s body as far from his own. Rupture spells out collapse. In the disturbance of body schema and self-representation (Berger, 2012, p. 138) and incomplete corporeality (Raoult, 2012), the body image for the adolescent is symbolically deficient. In sufficiently good functioning, the differentiation is progressive and in adolescence accompanied by changes in family ties and the world. In the clinic of the sexual acting out, this process is prevented and the infantile omnipotence struggles to give way to the de-idealization of the incorporated parental imagos.

I approach the excessive care and over-excitement of the subject in an incestual framework (Racamier, 1995). The adolescent tries to protect himself by ejecting the intrusion of the object (Raoult, 2012) via the act for example (Ciavaldini, 1999) but the fusion splits the links and affiliates them to trivialized and generalized denial. In the discourse of families, we emphasize the following elements: parentification is an opportunity, late co-sleeping is a continuous search for affection, the denial of acting out is to protect and not to ward off the law, sexual assault does not have as many consequences as rape. The therapeutic work makes third to prevent the anguish of death. Indeed, the anguish of death crosses the teenager and makes him live a narcissistic identity collapse. Who am I? What comes from me? Questions to which the third responds by being containing but which he ends up failing through his complicity with the excessive care of the mother.

Transgenerational parentification

By parentification, we designate parent-child bonds in which the child has an adult role in order to compensate for the narcissistic faults of his parents. It is a role that ends up narcissizing its wearer if not narcissized intra psychically. It’s a give-andtake framework unsuited to that age. Parents carrying an insolvent transgenerational past do not allow differentiation to consolidate the cleavage and weaken the secure and narcissistic foundations.

The transgenerational is present in parentification. It intervenes within the framework of the repetition of a narcissistically insecure family model in the lineage but also in that of the ghosts who are attached to it. The family psychic apparatus (Ruffiot, 1981) composed of different interactions, allows the staging of the denial pact (Kaës, 1988) of lack of differentiation. Each member of the family is crossed by the cleavage of the cumulative trauma (Khan, 1976) transgenerational (Durastante, 2009) in his own way, fortifying the latter according to his role. It is then that the bearer takes action while his parents are the ones who set up an environment fragile enough to allow incest (Racamier, 1995).

Telescoping of the generations in the unsocialization of the complex incorporated in the fraternal bonds

Emphasizing the role of the telescoping of generations (Faimberg, 1993) in this clinic inevitably amounts to emphasizing socialization in the fraternal complex (Kaës, 2008; Jaïtin, 2006, 2021). Indeed, the confusion between the generations is under the background of the confusion of genders and ages and generates, in the outside world, a repetition of what has been integrated via the internal family dynamics.

Fraternal bonds are the first place of exteriorization. Socialization takes place here. Conflicts, jealousy, complicity and hate/love ambivalence lead to sufficiently narcissistically anchored bases. The sibling incorporated and not signified in the incestual family dynamic is a sibling shaken by the real and fantasized staging that is activated there.

Socialization allows the integration of cultural and legal laws to activate the need to belong by establishing social bonds. The need for differentiation is consolidated since having acquaintances, spouses, doing activities outside the school framework and in a group… are ways of relying on others outside the family framework to understand the world and understand oneself. . These laws change over time. However, it is in families that the legal framework is created. Families marked over the generations by a changing world history but also personal and which transmits its achievements. The story remains in the walls and the care that is not good enough.

Clinic:

M.  and transgenerational incest

1. is a 14-year-old teenager at the time of placement, with a promising diploma project in mechanics. In his siblings there are older half-brothers on his father’s side, 4 brothers and a sister and two little half-sisters on his mother’s side. He is the eldest. His mother is a housewife and his father is a driver. His parents separated when M. was 8 years old. Since then, M. could see his father on weekends. M. is described as helpful and polite by the team.

He committed acts of rape and sexual assault on his 5-year-old little sister. The facts took place once at his mother’s house and three times at his father’s house. It should be noted that at his father’s house, the 5 brothers and sisters shared the one and only bedroom in the apartment during weekend custody. After the revelation of the facts (unknown context), several measures were ordered by the judge, including placement, an obligation of care and a psychological expertise which underlined the possibility of a recurrence. The disclosure of the facts by M. proved difficult since he denies the act of penetration and speaks of touching. During his indictment, M. laid down words about a sexual assault he suffered from his then 14-year-old half-brother when M. was 7 years old. This revelation joins the past victim of incest of his father who was sexually abused and raped, as well as his 5 brothers and sisters, by his own father during his childhood. M.’s grandfather was convicted and served a prison sentence. He died 20 years ago, leaving a lot of bitterness in the father of M.

Request and description of the route

The source of the request is the institution’s follow-up protocol, which stipulates the obligation of a meeting with the service psychologist. The request was based on the protocol for meeting when a new teenager arrives on the service. The request then came from M. who wanted to talk about his past as a victim. Not without difficulty, M. was able to get involved in meetings and mediation groups. During the follow-up period, M. was absent twice because he had difficulty waking up in the morning and remembering the time of the appointment.

His final return to his father’s home, after a placement interspersed between collective accommodation, a weekend with a relay family, a weekend with his paternal aunt and a weekend with his father, put an end to the therapeutic follow-up. However, M. wanted to continue working with a psychologist as his father had recently started and his little sister (victim of the acts he committed) since the revelation of the facts. His return home also coincided with the end of my contract as a psychologist.

The meeting with M.’s father made it possible to underline the still present impact of the victim’s experience in the family sphere and the fact that incest was “overspoken” by concealing the part of suffering which emerges from it. His father explained at length the prohibition of incest in view of his past as a victim but did not wish to speak of his affects and his multiple somatizations.

The meeting with M.’s mother made it possible to underline the responsibility of the latter in relation to his brothers and sisters as well as the guilt of his mother in the face of this role which she imposed on him and her denial of this role. Indeed, she says she does not know if she will be able to trust him again one day as she did before by entrusting her brothers and sisters to him during the bath, for example.

An MJIE^[1] having been ordered by the judge made it possible to underline the care in excess through the anger of M. in the event of frustration because of his parentifying omnipotence, the proximity of the bodies with his mother as a child and with his father after divorce as well as the overstimulation caused by parents by talking about incest without including the consequences, emotions and affects. Not to mention that M.’s parents did not file a complaint following the sexual assault he suffered from his halfbrother.

Description of support

Individual therapeutic monitoring

The meetings with M. were as frequent as once every 15 days with a two-week break and those over 5 months. Here are the elements necessary for the analysis, taken from my thesis:

“First and second meetings: We discussed his interest in reading books about supernatural events. During one of these sessions, he said he was exchanging text messages with his mother. We noticed his expression upset by these exchanges. M. verbalizes his mother’s reluctance to welcome him back. In addition, M. says he is reassured because his half-brother (attacker) was heard by the gendarmerie following the complaint filed by M. from the start of his placement. We noted that this reinforces M. in his position as an unrecognized victim and that his placement allowed him to put legal words to his suffering.

Third and fourth meetings: M. was motivated at the beginning and withdrawn afterwards. We have noticed that talking about actions creates total confusion in him.

Incapable of being empathetic towards his sister, he only repeats what professionals

expect of him: “I shouldn’t have done what I did, it was wrong”. M. says he feels bad and blames himself but goes on to redefine the facts as attacks and not rapes. We can say that he is indifferent to his sister’s suffering just as his parents were indifferent to his suffering. We found that his attacker is synonymous with anger.

Fifth and sixth meetings: M. returns to his role within the family organization with both parents. He says “I cooked dinner, I changed the little ones after the shower”. At school, he continues by helping his classmates with their homework. However, he wants to stop his studies and start working. We can say that parentification is evident in his daily life and the need for financial independence despite his good educational level. M. discussed the molestation he suffered when he was 7 and being forced to watch his stepbrother masturbate and said “My parents, they knew.” We observed that M. begins a process of de-idealization of parental figures.

Seventh meeting: As part of the definitive return, we highlighted M.’s verbalization of the affect of guilt in his true self. In fact, being at her father’s house all the time prevents him from welcoming his daughter during weekends and school holidays. Thus, we cannot help but make a link with M.’s request for an apprenticeship in mechanics where he will have to be in a boarding school during the week. He returns to the rumors in his old high school “I said that I was placed because of drug trafficking”. We see that M. feels shame about the actions he has committed. M. is eager to leave to be closer to his family. He wants to go back to his mother but he knows that is impossible. Despite the team’s requests for an aggressor/victim confrontation (M. and his sister), M. says he is not capable of it. He does not ask for news of his sister (victim). We noted that recognition of one’s sister’s place among siblings is altered by transgenerational incest and its consequences. » (Riani, 2022).

Do-with therapeutic

1. participated in workshops and groups during the placement period, among them: During a Photolangage© group session in a psychologist/educator pair, the interstitial is underlined by the educator’s resumption of the other young people’s mockery around Mr.’s increased masturbation and lack of hygiene. Indeed, Mr. talks about his long masturbatory showers in front of the other young people in the home. M. talks about his sexuality to emphasize his inability to control his impulses.

He also participated in a painting group after visiting a museum. M. denied himself access to the imagination and chose to use the facilities. In his drawing, he uses the name of the activity using graphic design.

1. was able to participate in an outing to the SPA. During this outing, M. followed and copied the reactions of the two other young people present, in relation to the dogs. Sometimes he will cuddle the dogs, sometimes he will make fun of them or fear them depending on the preferences of others. Thus the question of empathy arose.

Theoretical axes

Axis 1: Cleavage and cumulative transgenerational trauma

The cleavage being studied as a cleavage in the acting out just like the victim but also as a transgenerational cleavage in the denial pact of undifferentiation denied, we will highlight the incestuous fusion (Govindama, 2017) and the absence of the third and this, through the parentification explained and regretted in the ambivalent parental discourse, to highlight the cleavage in M. In adolescence, M. being in a movement of reorganization, comes up against the negative pact of undifferentiation denied. M. being the bearer of the act, he reactivates certain transgenerational divisions. Through acting out, he tries to symbolize the incestuous family history.

The generations in the family dynamics are confused since the proximity of the bodies hints at parentifying trust. In this dynamic, M. guarantees a family false-self framework (Tordo , 2020) through his all-powerful role which prevents him from losing and from accepting loss and regaining (Winnicott, 1975). The seemingly banal image of M.’s family is of paramount importance given the guilt and shameful transgenerational incestuous history. The shame coming from a narcissistic attack during the indictment of M. (which recalls that of the grandfather) and the guilt originating in the trauma in the aftermath of the incest. This trauma has become cumulative over generations of perpetrator-victim. Despite the “overspoken” and forbidden character of incest, the latter is concealed and mute by a third party (father) absent following the parental separation under the background of difficulties in modifying the status of victim of incest. An incestual and fusional mother-son discourse takes place. M., not having been heard by his parents in his status as a victim of fraternal incest (masturbation of his half-brother in front of him), was able to be heard in the session and see himself protected by the institution which posed legal limits. The sexual acting out committed by M. is under the confusion of generations, bodies and ages finding source in the cumulative trauma (Khan, 1976) of transgenerational incest but also of the incorporation of the forbidden of incest. In order to bring a solution to the fragile traumatic story of the father, incest becomes a compulsive repetitive passage. This attempt occurs under the background of excessive care of the mother and the absence of the third party, visible via the parentifying incestuous fusion . As the fusion makes it difficult to access the three complexes (primary and secondary oedipal, castration and fraternal), M. cannot begin his own “historicalization” (Aulagnier, 2002). M. is the one who carries a dynamic characterized by the telescoping of generations (Faimberg, 1993) since having undergone, he submits genitally to adolescence to perpetuate the attempt at symbolization. In fraternal ties, the partial object finds its place as a receptacle of the negative pact (Kaës, 1988) of lack of differentiation due to the introjection of fundamental prohibitions. The denial of incest in the family sphere underlines the inability to symbolize the transgenerational cumulative trauma and prevents the collapse of its members.

The violence of the placement traumatically separated M. from his family and caused him to become compulsive with food. Its tendency to engulf more than to nourish itself denotes a frustration in the face of the absence of the object of love. M. surrounds himself with a physical barrier envelope with rapid weight gain, and protects himself by seeking to be financially independent via a professional path imagined at 14 years old. By fulfilling himself, M. stifles his distress and his death anxieties dating from his 7th year when his parents failed to protect him. Not having sufficient internal resources to overcome the loss of contact with his family, he avoids castration anxiety by refusing health instructions on this subject. Can we consider his compulsive way of eating as a sign of differentiation and committed depression? To what extent can we speak of an attempt to access adolescence and the institutional secondary Oedipus complex?

The significant affect of shame is visible in M. during his exchanges with his peers (said to be placed for drug trafficking) and contrasts with the significant affect of guilt in his parents. On returning to the paternal home, the parentification loses its intensity because M. has a study project leading to independence and boarding school during the week. He abandons the secondary advantages of his infantile and parentifying omnipotence to integrate relative negativity (Kaës, 1993) into the family sphere by letting go of infantile parental imagos to access the socialization of the outside world. Indeed, M. continues to show proof of parentification by taking into account the financial difficulties of his father which will be facilitated by the placement of M. in his home. Each of the members sacrifices themselves in their own way to try to find a balance. The father accepts his son’s placement at his home for the weekend to reduce his guilt, M. abandons the idea of returning to his mother’s home to consolidate his project of differentiation, the mother tries to redeem the denial of incest by sacrificing the father-daughter bond. Through the secondary institutional Oedipus complex, M. knew how to differentiate himself. M. got into a relationship and allowed himself to go to foster care.

1. perpetuated cumulative trauma to avoid family collapse by being the affect carrier (Ciccone & Ferrant,2009) of the family sphere. The legal third party and its capacity to contain the impulse discharges of M. allows a parent-child defusion to access the contained symbolization of the transgenerational cumulative trauma (Durastante,

2009). Through the work of the institutional third party, his superego is strengthened.

Axis 2: Alienation, crisis and differentiation in the transgenerational

In the case of M., we are in an impossible siblingship and in a fraternal complex (Kaës, 2008; Jaitin, 2006) which cannot take place in view of the questioning of filiation. Indeed, the affect of guilt having had difficulty in arising, he emphasizes that

1. cannot situate himself or his sister among the siblings and symbolizes incest by appealing to the notion of disturbed triple baggage . by R. Jaitin (2021). However, a trigger for fraternal incest is necessary. In M., this element was the age of the victim on the one hand and of the perpetrator on the other, thus stating a passage necessary to symbolize the rejection of the sister (victim) from the family psychic envelope (Ruffiot, 1981). Socialization is undermined in its role of introducing the outside world into the internal family norm and, in fact, of marking fundamental taboos. The alteration of radical negativity (Kaës, 1993) marks M.’s inability to be in the death fantasy in fraternal bonds and to be creative and imaginative in order to unload drive. His drive being exacerbated by the negative pact of non-differentiation and nondenunciation as well as by the incestual discourse. Transgenerational puppet, unable to symbolize in the fraternal complex, M. turns to the discharge of family history. The question of the in-between between violence and aggressiveness does not arise in the context of incestuous cumulative transgenerational trauma since it is obvious. Acting out is linked to opportunity, promiscuity and the compulsion to repeat. Destroying others is not an objective because the partial object is necessary in the family dynamics but also rejected. Violence is not an objective because acting out is not a wish to do harm.

In his discourse, M. reveals, as a false self (Winnicott, 1956), an attempt to symbolize taboos. He says he is aware that incest is forbidden. However, he does not show empathy for his sister (the victim). The family sphere is itself affected by the denial of transgenerational incest and the lack of empathy. M. was himself the partial object of a lack of empathy on the part of his parents with regard to his status as a victim of incest in the fraternal bonds which could not be symbolized and which was the subject of a traumatic compulsion. M. when the acting out of rape on his sister is discussed, enters into a rage and anger since he is in denial of the rape and claims to have sexually assaulted her. The cleavage of the trauma he suffered collides with the trauma of which he is the author via the negative pact of non-denunciation. Indeed, the cleavage is visible via the confusion of generations (partial object, parentification) and the fictitious empathy due to the inability to put oneself in the place of the victim. M. does not ask for news of his sister. He is frustrated, feels betrayed and claims to be a victim of injustice. Thus the question of the meaning and symbolism of the two terms (rape and sexual assault) arises for M. The mode of incestual perpetuation suffered weighs in the balance for M., his sister and their father.

Axis 3: Transference and countertransference

In the aftermath of the analysis, we noticed that the criminological is confronted with the victimological for the psychoeducational team. Despite this confusion of the inbetween, M. is faced with his responsibilities. The institution mirrors (Bleger, 1970) the anger-guilt ambivalence of M.’s parents since the psychoeducational team has a place of institutional container by protecting M. while infantilizing and brooding over him. The psychoeducational team finds a balance through doing-with by calling on partners to protect him (planning center, collaboration between partners, Photolanguage©) while blocking a relationship with another teenager considered dangerous for M.

In view of the rejection and the ambivalent confusion of the team in the face of the event in which a pornographic video was viewed by M. and the newcomer in the presence of the educators, M. is put back in his place as a teenager while keeping a fragile child’s place. The team pushes him to protect his intimate life but also to socialize and differentiate himself from the institutional framework while signifying the fundamental prohibitions in the face of his instincts as an all-powerful child.

In the transfer to the clinician, we underline a projection of a confusion of generations in M. given the lack of consideration for the victim and his own experience as a victim not taken into account. Indeed, throughout the placement, the clinician could not keep in mind the victim’s (sister’s) affiliation to the family genealogy. The team will have to tell us again several times that the victim is not the half-sister or the neighbour.

In the transfer with the psychoeducational team, the case of M. triggered profound internal functional changes. M. allowed the institution to integrate the changes and to accept the taboo of sexuality in adolescence by choosing to contain and secure rather than be in denial and this in the image of psychic work started in the family dynamic. Moreover, the home being exclusively reserved for male placements due to the absence of individual toilets, the arrival of a girl (hierarchical obligation to accept her), when we were at the end of our contract, woke up the anxieties of the team and triggered the multiplication of fantasies (anxiety about prostitution of this teenager and fear of sex trafficking). We were able to highlight and work as a clinician on the anxieties of homosexual sexuality feared within the home and to order contraceptive equipment (female and male) made available in the secretariat. We also pushed the team (secretariat included) to train to approach sexuality with the teenagers who wish it and thus to give direction to their accompaniment. This is how in the transfer between the clinician and M. we emphasize the work around the denial of sexuality within the placement structure. M. was then able to put to work, in complete psychic security, the family dynamic by using the group psychic apparatus (Kaës, 1976). In the counter-transference between M. and the clinician, we noticed a frustration that echoes the childhood experience of taboo and denial of sexuality. Injustice is then linked to the absence of preventive means and to the denial of heterosexual and homosexual sexuality at an age when drive is exacerbated by puberty. The difficulty of educators to contain in the face of the sexual behavior of adolescents (pornographic videos, moans in the hallway, discourse of the newcomer around his homosexuality), then comes to signify the need for contained listening and making sense of the discourse and sexual behavior and not the exclusivity of the judicialization of the placement.

Conclusion

Adolescence and puberty bring their share of changes in the psychic, social and physical fields. Psychopathological particularities lead to questions about the dysfunction of transgenerational family dynamics. These particularities advocate institutional care that is sufficiently objectively subjective, neutral and benevolent , to overcome the dysfunction in the primary links. In a future article, we will highlight the institutional functioning in institutions where the response, although it is mirrored, leads to convincing results of differentiation and socialization.

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Adolescence and acting out
Hanane Riani
https://doi.org/10.69093/AIPCF.2023.29.05

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[1] Justice investigation and educational measure