Description
Adolescence implies a subjective operation that urges the adolescent to play new roles. In direct contact with the signifier of the Other's absence, the adolescent is expected to reposition himself in relation to the Other and to castration. The Name-of-the -Father is questioned and the adolescent's relation with the Law is characterized by conflicts and ambivalences. To revalidate the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father becomes the central issue. The growing involvement of adolescents in infractions has placed this topic in evidence, and that was the motivation for this research. The general goal here is to
investigate the relationship between the position of law-breaking and law-abiding adolescents in relation to the Law and the infractional act and the operation of revalidation of the Name-of-the-Father. More specifically, this work aims to analyze what it means to be an
adolescent nowadays, to investigate the position of these adolescents in relation to family and the official authorities, to investigate the adolescents' conception about the Law and infraction, and to analyze the positions of law-breaking and law-abiding adolescents. By
means of a semi-directive interview with questions about adolescence, law, and infractions committed by adolescents, the researcher listened to law-breaking and lawabiding adolescents. The interviews with the law-breaking adolescents took place at Recife's Semi-Open Detention Centers, at FUNASE (a juvenile detention center) , and with adolescents that had been condemned to socioeducational sentences. The law-abiding adolescents were students from public schools in Recife, where the interviews were carried out. Guided by psychoanalytical principles, the researcher's hearing aimed to pay special attention to aspects that could be deemed as indications of the formation of the unconscious: mistakes, slips, contradictions, pauses; always paying attention to oscillations in the speaker's discourse . The results show that adolescence brings along with it discoveries and conquests, but also the contestation of the Other, a point that is stronger in law-breaking adolescents than in law-abiding ones. The findings point to the adolescent's vulnerability in incurring in the infraction , above all due to the importance of the group in the operation that they experience. The adolescents' position in relation to family and the authorities suggest that in the case of law-abiding adolescents, the contestation of the Other does not go beyond the boundaries of the transgression characteristic of the adolescent
operation , once there is an Other providing support; this is different from what happens with law-breaking adolescents. It was possible to notice different positions in relations to the Law: in the case of law-abiding adolescents, there is the meeting with an Other, who places
itself as an addressing place, which renders it possible to them to revalidate the Name-of-the-Father, even if in this process they incur in transgressions, as a sort of appeal to the Other to reaffirm the interdict. In the case of the law-breaking adolescents, such meeting does not take place; hence it becomes an obstacle to the process of revalidation, which leads them to the path of infraction. The findings point that the position of the adolescent in relation to the Law
depends on the revalidation of the Name-of-the-Father, and has as a condition the meeting with an Other who positions itself as an addressing place, as radical alterity and transmission of the Law. These findings advance the debate about teenage clinic and the relation between the adolescent and the Law and the infractional act; acting thus as a basis for further consideration of questions dealing with this topic in order to make possible interventions that
help in this quest.
