The adolescence with anti-social symptoms and the process of re-socialization: Winnicott and the patient Peter

Abstract

This article intends to discuss the differences between the process of socialization assumed by healthy adolescents and that one characteristic of adolescents which present antisocial symptoms. It concludes that, in the second kind, the process is, really, of re-socialization, since the original process of socialization was broken by the traumatic event which produced the anti-social symptoms. In this case, the adolescent needs to regress to a dependence stage in order to re-socialize.