Discours de banalisation chez les personnes condamnées : de quelques aspects cliniques en contexte pénitentiaire

Abstract

ObjectivesThe use of the term “banalization” has become widespread in the judicial and penitentiary context, as a descriptive way for the professional (penitentiary counsellor, psychologist, magistrate, etc.) to account for the gap between an institutionally sanctioned offense and the convicted person's point of view. In this way, we hear in our daily lives about people in the criminal justice system who “banalize their actions.” However, this term lacks a clear definition and an operationality, appearing more as a general category and sometimes as a “catch-all.” This article aims to question the use of banalization in order to give it a more precise definition, in particular, regarding its psychodynamic stakes. MethodStarting from a psychologist's practice in a penitentiary service of insertion and probation, and relying on clinical material around banalization discourse, we propose to develop some aspects of such discursive anchorages that are located at the crossroads of the singular subject and the social reference, or which question the notion of defense mechanism. A detour through the works of H. Arendt will also allow us to extend the theoretical field to categories of thought activity, individual responsibility, relationship to institution and culture (prohibition, law, norms, etc.), and will also illuminate the distinction between banality and banalization. ResultsBanalization discourse demonstrates, for the subject, the psychodynamic stakes in terms of the ability to think through ones actions, to dialecticize one's individual responsibility, and to situate oneself in a relationship with the other. There is, furthermore, a social dimension (rules of living together, normative, instituted) at stake. From this point of view, banalization discourse involves the subject as subject of language and of a social bond, incarnated here in the institutional judiciary and penitentiary context. DiscussionThe discourse of banalization, on the condition of being questioned outside of mere moral considerations or judgments, opens up a complex discursive figure for the professional, in light of psychodynamic determinisms, references to the institutional symbolic framework, and the expression of a language practice within the social bond. Banalization questions, from this point of view, the meaning of the sentence and the probation process put in place around the notion of the offender's accountability. ConclusionsBanalization, beyond the person who minimizes her/his actions, refers to a wider clinical vision in a penitentiary environment, since it touches the subjectivation of the judicial event, the manner in which subjects are included in the social bond and what regulates it, their empathic preoccupations, their ability to conceptualize their actions, their relationship to a common reference point with its necessary limits… In this way, banalization emerges as a figure of language that must be considered in a way that goes beyond the mere description of a representation gap.