For a clinic of drug and alcohol abuse with adolescents from popular communities in Rio de Janeiro. Parting from clinical circumstances and paradigmatic elements, the paper argues that many of the trajectories of youngsters from popular communities facing problems with the law regarding the use and trafficking of drugs are, indeed, typical. They indicate, under mere singular events, an important and institutionalized production of these young people as outlaws. Overlooking this dimension of the problem may compromise scientific research with structures that produce delinquency. Whereas a practice oriented towards psychoanalytic clinic, informed by some reflection on the institutional framework, questions how the relation these adolescents develop, to their own word, in treatment, can change these institutional mechanisms.
Psychoanalysis; adolescents; psychosocial approach; clinical intervention; institution