An exchange of letters and listening to the sociopolitical dimension of suffering: The construction of a clinical device with adolescents deprived of freedom

Abstract

This study analyzes the construction of the clinical device of exchanging of letters with adolescents who were deprived of their liberty during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such exchange of letters sought to continue university extension activities that were previously carried out in person in a socio-educational unit. We research psychoanalysis as an ethical-methodological guidance and used reading-listening and listening-flânerie to evaluate the material that was produced from 2020 to 2022. The analysis showed that creating the device sought to respond to the urgency of social distancing by devising spaces for the circulation of adolescents’ discourse, subverting the logic of silencing by proposing listening to the sociopolitical dimension of suffering., thus opposing the forgetting and erasure of subjects marked by violence, deprivation, and exclusion.

Keywords:
Adolescents in conflict with the law; sociopolitical suffering; psychoanalysis; exchange of letters