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By way of the Oedipal model, symbolic law occupies a central position in psychoanalytic theories of psychosexual development. By linking desire to the law, it immediately constitutes both the foundation and the metaphor of the effectiveness of the concrete law for the “treatment” of transgressions in general and juvenile delinquency in particular, according to a schema that more or less directly refers to the conflict of desire that lies at the heart of neurotic functioning. However, far from being the universal panacea suggested by some discourses, the law questions its application in certain psychopathological organizations such as borderline functioning, which both weaken third party relationships and favor acting out. Setting out from a psychopathological interpretation of such borderline functionings, this article examines the functions of violence in this particular context. It seeks to show that these functions are determined by their “otherness gradient,” going from provocation-violence to destruction-violence. On this basis it draws some conclusions on the principles that ought to govern judicial and therapeutic responses to each of these two types of violence, by contrasting the logic of the law with that of transitionality.