Narratives about the deprivation of freedom and the development of the adolescent self

Abstract

A review is presented of the theoretical trajectory of the concepts of self and identity in Psychology, situating the socio-cultural-historical theoretical-methodological perspective, with an emphasis on the narrativist-dialogical version. The latter is taken as a contribution to the interpretation of processes of development of the self in the adolescent within the specific context of the deprivation of freedom to which teenage offenders are submitted. The narrativist-dialogical perspective conceives the self as a complex unity, the integrated system of culture and personal affections constructed through the social interaction that takes place in concrete socio-institutional contexts, having the human language as its key means of organization. The situations that disorganize one's sense of self, like the events associated to delinquency, activate subjective mechanisms of reorganization of the self, which promote development. Qualitative analyses of the narrative sequences produced by teenagers deprived of their freedom are presented, obtained from interactions with the researcher in structured situations. The objective is to extend the understanding of the formation of the narrative identity of the teenagers to specific contexts such as those involving violence and deprivation of freedom. The analysis of the narratives produced along the selected sequence of verbal interaction, performed under a micro-genetic perspective, reveals the dynamics of the processes of creation of new significations by the participants about themselves, the context, and the social processes associated to the detention procedure, pointing towards new lines of development of the self.