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Adolescence, a period convenient to acting out because of the internal and external reorganizations of the subject, is a period of paradoxes: need for autonomy and dependence, activity and passivity. Some adolescents find it difficult to make a request for care, which places them in a position of dependence with respect to the adult-therapist. Court-ordered treatments, one of the protective measures that can be used by the juvenile judge, permit that an adolescent be obliged to follow a psychological treatment. The paper discusses the place of this measure in the adolescents’ care through a clinical vignette concerning a fifteen-year-old male adolescent physically abused by his father during childhood and caught in a symbiotic relation with his mother who, after being violent to the him, threatens to kill the social worker who ordered his placement in a foster home. Court-ordered treatment during adolescence: constraint or support