A clinical situation encountered in the context of the Youth Judicial Protection system will enable us to explore the issue of violent radicalization and the desire to fight in adolescence. Demands for destruction should be understood as a problem of fusion and separation with an archaic maternal figure. In this pubertary context of fragile narcissism and identity, the attraction of war would become a recourse against archaic annihilation anxieties.

Adolescence, 2026, 44, 1, 75-85.