Culpados pela sociedade e vítimas pela instituição: a prática da autolesão no contexto de vulnerabilidades vivenciadas por adolescentes privados de liberdade

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the practice of self-harm among adolescents in conflict with the law who are in institutions of deprivation of liberty, highlighting the vulnerabilities that these young people face and establishing an intersection between psychology and pedagogy. It is assumed that self-harm should not be understood exclusively as an individual clinical phenomenon or isolated pathology, but as a subjective expression of psychological suffering produced by experiences of social exclusion, institutionalization and fragility of affective and community bonds. Under these conditions, self-harm appears as a form of body language, which denounces the unspeakable and attempts to reinscribe the subject in a scenario of symbolic and affective erasure. The main objective is to understand the psychological suffering involved in the process of becoming an adolescent under deprivation of liberty, analyzing the relationship between social exclusion, deprivation of liberty and self-harm, through the methodology of participant observation in a unit of the General Department of Socio-Educational Actions (Degase). Through a literature review, the research explores the underlying causes of self-harm, such as trauma, social exclusion, mental health problems and lack of emotional support, with listening circles held at the institution being the main methodological device. These meetings were constituted as collective spaces for welcoming, sharing and symbolic elaboration, where adolescents could narrate their experiences and feelings, making ethical listening and recognition of the uniqueness of their trajectories possible. The listening circles thus functioned as a clinical-pedagogical strategy for strengthening social bonds, allowing the emergence of meanings about self-harm and the experience of adolescence under deprivation of liberty. The theoretical framework is based on authors from classical and contemporary psychoanalysis, such as Freud, Winnicott, Dolto, Fédida and Birman, to reflect on the psychic processes that mark adolescence – such as the construction of identity, mourning, separations and narcissistic challenges. It also engages with contributions from Aberastury, Cardoso, Kaës and Lacan, regarding borderline states, psychic pain and subjective constitution in contexts of risk. Le Breton, Bauman and Mbembe are used in the analysis of the body as symbolic territory for the expression of pain and resistance in the face of contemporary forms of exclusion. Finally, the research also considers the contributions of critical social psychology (Sawaya, Minerbo, Kemper), addressing the psychological effects of inequality, institutional invisibility, and necropolitics directed at peripheral youth. The analysis reveals that self-harm, in this context, can be understood as a strategy of emotional regulation, drive reinvestment, silent protest, or extreme language in the face of social silencing. Accumulated trauma, emotional abandonment, pathologization of pain, excessive medicalization, and lack of institutional support emerge as central factors in understanding the phenomenon. By reflecting on the subjective effects of deprivation of liberty and institutional abandonment, this research seeks to contribute to the construction of socio-educational practices that break with the punitive logic and promote care, listening, and recognition of the complexity that adolescence in situations of extreme vulnerability goes through.