Du processus psychique de transformation d’enfants en soldats : une clinique de la janissarisation

Objectives

This article focuses on the process of enlisting and transforming children into soldiers in Congo. It analyzes the psychological mechanisms at work in this dynamic.

Method

As part of a Unicef project (DDR-Demobilization, Disarmament, Reintegration), many children (9–17 years old) associated with armed forces and groups were met several times (five interviews per child) in Centers for Transit and Orientation (CTO) upon their return from combat zones. An interview grid was constructed which allows us to explore their family situation before enlistment, their motives, their account of their stint in the armed groups, and the reasons for remaining in the armed groups. This article focuses on six emblematic cases.

Results

The process of transforming children into soldiers is understood through what we propose to call the process of Janissarization. This process reflects the recuperation of the effects of societal catastrophes with the aim of actively transforming children/adolescents into soldiers by means of the subversion of the usual maturation processes of the psychic apparatus: psychic rearrangement in connection with puberty, choice of genital object, and redirection of the referential system (and of the ideal) in which these different mutations take place.

Discussion

The discussion focuses on the warlord's approach, which includes the reversal of the structuring symbols of the group-community, the development of a paradoxical bond of attachment to the warlord, the instrumentalization of the figure of the intruder, and finally the establishment of a monstrous victim-executioner scene. The figure of the child soldier is strongly based on the more common figure of the intrusive and unwanted child. The main differences between these two figures lie in the lifting of the ban on murder and in the establishment of an executioner-victim scenario.

Conclusion

Janissarization is thus an active process, which concerns the manipulation of the symbolic, and an active operation of creating and then hijacking a universe of meaning, codes, and ideology within the group. Whatever their modes of enlistment, the child/adolescent soldiers concerned by this process require sustained and adapted support that frees them from armed conflicts.