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We propose a contribution to the study of criminal origins based on several medico-psychological assessments of adolescent criminals. Adolescent crime translates the “dead end” of the adolescens process into an actualization of the infantile primal. The seriousness of criminal violence portrays the misadventure of the “separation/individuation” process. Crime is a call for representation against the backdrop of agonistic and anaclitic anxiety. It shows an “alienated figurability” (M. and E. Laufer) put into action in the crime as a response to experience of a situation considered by the criminal to be dehumanizing. Referring to P. Aulagnier’s research, particularly the “auto-engenderment principle,” we link criminal origins to problems in the relationship between mother and child, to defects in the “protective shield,” to the main psychic envelopes and to the inadequacy of maternal responses to signals by the child.