What does a "Young Apprentice" Learn? Teenage Psychic Labor During the pandemic

Abstract

This work aims to propose a discussion regarding the signifiers involving teenage psychic labor of young people from the Young Apprentice Project during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a psychoanalytical research-intervention, carried out with 26 adolescents from the Young Apprentice Project, divided into two groups of 13 participants each. For data collection, the "Space of Free and Implicated Speech" instrument was developed, consisting of four online conversation sessions, each lasting one hour. The meetings were recorded in an Experience Diary and analyzed through the Poetics of Extraction. It was observed that these adolescents are given the mission of changing the backgrounds of their families, with this main desire being placed on them by their parents. Their families seem to make a hasty withdrawal of the position of authority, delegating this reference position to the Project and operating in a rupture of parental transmission. The young people feel insecure, yet they find in the Young Apprentice Project a welcome to continue towards their desired position. We believe that the Project, supported by psychoanalytic listening, has shed light on these issues that surround adolescence, allowing another place and outlook towards these adolescents in search of references that facilitate the psychic labor necessary for their constitution.