Psychoanalysis and Law: listening to the subject in the context of socio-educational measures

Abstract

In this article we intend to reflect upon innovations on the Statute of Children and Adolescents regarding intervention with children and adolescents who have perpetrated misdemeanors, and to present the contributions offered by Psychoanalysis through singularized listening. We will think of the possibilities and limitations of socio-educational measures as an action which calls for the production of subjects. Whereas the subject for psychoanalytic discourse is crossed by a structural abandonment announcing the fundamental importance of their position in relation to the other, it is necessary to present the differences between the juridical and the psychoanalytic concepts of subject. It is also necessary to examine the attitude of the Law towards children and adolescents throughout history. We finish with an illustrative case. We conclude that socio-educational measures intend to promote reinsertion in society, readaptation, social adjustment, integration to family and society. Psychoanalysis advocates that the construction of new project is only possible when the subject, by means of words, can be responsible for his or her actions, singularly.