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In the course of a clinical situation relating to the care of a fifteen-year-old teenager living in a therapeutic foster institution, the author questions how to support the subjectivation process at work for the patient. In the context of an institution placement imposed on the teenager, how can the care team offer a setting that is sufficiently reassuring and welcoming to embody a figure of authority that would lead a subject to autonomy? When teenagers are under the influence of a powerful and idealized fatherly figure, identified as a criminal hero, how can they start building an inner authority, to help extract themselves from an alienating passive position?