2024
Cairn
Grégoire Thibouville, « An intermediate transcultural space to “treat” violent, young delinquents in New Caledonia », L'Autre, ID : 10670/1.52838f...
How can we “treat” violent, young, non-neurotic delinquents coping with new psychopathological, psychosocial and cultural issues? From ten years of fieldwork, we have developed a multi-generational and multicultural group structure for these adolescents coming under the child and adolescent judiciary protection scheme. The aim of this group is to guide these youngsters through a humanising process. They are invited to discuss this innovating programme and the way it should be run in the light the life trajectory of Kurt, a severely damaged “hunting-murdering” adolescent. The issue for them is to reinitiate the processes of symbolisation and historicisation, and to form a narcissistic contract. One main aim for the psychologists is to develop an ability to create a relationship, by being sufficiently “malleable”, as in the image of the reed in the wind that bends but does not break.