000 01742cam a2200205 4500500
005 20250121110248.0
041 _afre
042 _adc
100 1 0 _aDaxhelet, Marie-Laure
_eauthor
700 1 0 _a Brunet, Louis
_eauthor
245 0 0 _aThe Experience of Child Soldiers. Psychic Development and Identity Transformations
260 _c2013.
500 _a45
520 _aIn order to better understand the issues and psychic readjustments occurring in children having participated in war, the principal author spent three months in a rehabilitation center for child soldiers in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The analyses, based on 78 interviews carried out with 22 children in a process of participant observation, show the consequences of two important identity crises: that of adhesion to an army constructed on denial and identification with the aggressor, and that of demobilization, which requires a readjustment of these identifications. During their military experience, these children had to cut themselves off from their past and their own identity by idealizing and identifying themselves in their military role. This process seems to have allowed the children to “absent themselves” or deny the anxiety-provoking experiences and thus avoid trauma. During demobilization, the soldier identity fades away and is gradually replaced by a massive new cathexis of their past lives.
690 _asubjective appropriation
690 _aidentification with the aggressor
690 _achild soldiers
786 0 _nLa psychiatrie de l’enfant | 56 | 1 | 2013-08-29 | p. 219-243 | 0079-726X
856 4 1 _uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-la-psychiatrie-de-l-enfant-2013-1-page-219?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080
999 _c536797
_d536797