Description
The Present study is inserted in the research field of social and political phenomena, departing
from the theoretical and epistemological referential elements of Psychoanalysis. Its main
objective is to verify the potentialities of friendship bonds among juveniles deprived of liberty
under extreme violence and understand their forms of expression. Pernambuco has appeared
among the states of Brazilian Federation with the highest rates of juveniles’ death in units of
deprivation or restriction of liberty, being interpersonal conflict one of its most frequent causes.
Thus, considering the high personal and social risk lived by juveniles “in conflict with the law”,
friendship was thought as a “subversive” potency of social and individual transformation,
capable of producing other forms of sociability in which plurality, dissent and conflict itself be
propellants of collective life. In this sense, this study questioned if it was possible for these
juveniles, inserted in a context of violence and constant aggression, to weave amicable relations and how friendship bonds emerged and were kept in these circumstances. Seeking to get to these matters, specific objectives were defined: identifying the strategies of mutual support used among peers in the context of deprivation of liberty; analyzing the experiences and meanings attributed to friendship by these juveniles; and learning their motivations / justifications for the practice of violence and reciprocal aggressions during the observation of the socio-educative measure of internment. To reach them, field research work was done in a Unit of the Fundação de Atendimento Socioeducativo de Pernambuco – FUNASE (Foundation of Socio-Educative Care of Pernambuco) with 17 to 19-year-old male juveniles who had been sentenced to internment as a socio-educative measure. Data were produced mainly departing from individual audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with four juveniles who integrated the music project of the Unit. Before the interviews, some of the Band rehearsals were observed and a Field Journal used. With regards to the analytical procedures, the material produced in three of the interviews was interpreted through the research method with/in psychoanalysis. The theoretical grounds were developed after the analysis of the research data, having as basilar interlocutors S. Freud and D.W. Winnicott. The results indicated that, in the studied Unit, coexistence in a context of constant aggression and violence disfavors creative bonds with others, including friendship ones, due to the shortening of the “in-between space” established between juveniles. On the other side, in the space and temporality of the Band, participants experienced the dynamics of the “transitional space” – playing, shared playing and cultural experience, with the presence of the linking processes characteristic of the work of the preconscious, as sublimation and symbolization, which made at least a “rehearsal” of friendship possible.