Lamus - Género, Raza y Poder

The Anthropology of AdolescentRisk-taking Behaviours

DAVID LE BRETON

From Death Games to the Life Game

Most young people are happily integrated in our society, yet a large fringe findit hard to find a meaning in their life or see themselves in a positive perspectivein their future history.1 Risk-taking particularly affects this category of youngpeople. The reasons for putting their life in jeopardy in order to exist arenumerous and interwoven. Only the personal history of each adolescent and therelational framework to which they belong can shed light on their acts. Dares,attempted suicides, drug-taking, eating disorders and reckless driving are there-fore common ways in which adolescents put their very existence in jeopardy.Abandonment and family indifference, but also overprotection, especially on thepart of the mother, can be root causes of such acts. Discredited paternal authorityis also a common theme. Sometimes the causes may be found in violence or sexualabuse, disagreement in the parental couple, hostility shown by a step-father ormother in a reconstructed family. In all cases, there is a lack of guidance in lifeand a feeling that behavioural limits are absent since parents have failed to setthem or impose them sufficiently. A vagueness in terms of relations with societyleading to insecurity and the impression of being stifled or living in a vacuum,

Body & Society © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),Vol. 10(1): 1–15DOI: 10.1177/1357034X04041758

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can also lead young people to adopt the same behaviours of symbolicallysoliciting death in their search to find limits so that they may exist.

What adolescents can no longer find within themselves, that is, the innerconviction that their life has a value and that they have a place to fill in this world,they will look for elsewhere in a random manner and in hand-to-hand combatwith reality. Risk-taking is rooted in general suffering and a confused feeling thatsomething is missing in their lives. There is no intention of actually dying, butrather of testing out their personal determination, of finding an intensity of being,a moment of supreme being, giving voice to a cry or expressing suffering, andsometimes all this is intermingled with a quest which often only takes on ameaning in the aftermath of the event. Risk-taking is often the other side ofplaying with the idea of death. By playing with the hypothesis of dying of theirown accord, adolescents are in fact stimulating a feeling of freedom: they areconquering their fear by going beyond it, persuading themselves that at anymoment they have an escape door should the unbearable occur. Death is there-fore part and parcel of their own power and ceases to be a force of destructionbeyond their control. Playing with the idea of death is a source of ambiguouspleasure and is never far from being a narcissistic restoration (Haim, 1969: 204 ff.).

The term ‘risk-taking’ applied to adolescents is increasingly apposite to desig-nate a series of variable behaviours whose common feature lies in exposingoneself to the not insignificant probability of being injured or dying, of jeopar-dizing one’s personal future or putting one’s health at risk. Risk-taking in adoles-cents is not just reduced to a symbolic game with the possibility of dying orclashing violently with the outside world, it also often occurs discreetly, insilence, but it nonetheless jeopardizes their potential since it deeply affects theirability to integrate socially, their love of life and may culminate in them becominga member of a sect and in the abdication of identity. Taking on a variety of forms,it stems from an intention, although it can also involve unconscious motivations.Some of these, thought through over a long period of time, become long-lastingand are adopted as a lifestyle, others mark an instance of taking action or a soleattempt linked to specific circumstances.

Risk-taking is also an ambivalent way of appealing to those who are closest tous. It constitutes an ultimate means of finding a meaning in life and a system ofvalues, it demonstrates an adolescent’s active resistance and his attempts tobecome a part of his world again. It is opposed to the far more incisive risk ofdepression or the radical collapse of meaning. In spite of the ensuing suffering, itnonetheless has a positive side, encouraging adolescents to be independent andfind their boundaries, to develop a better self-image and build an identity. Thisdoes not detract from the pain of risk-taking and its possible consequences in

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terms of injury, death and addiction. Yet we should in no way forget that suffer-ing is an upstream phenomenon, perpetuated by a complex relation between asociety, a family structure and a life history. Paradoxically, for some adolescentswho are suffering, there is a greater risk that they will remain immured in theirworld-weariness perhaps leading to a radical outcome one day. The turbulenceinvolved in risk-taking behaviours illustrates a determination to be rid of one’ssuffering and to fight on so that life can, at last, be lived.

Risk-taking is not to be confused in any way with a desire to die. It is not aclumsy form of suicide, but a roundabout means of ensuring that one’s life has avalue and pushing back the fear of personal insignificance. It is a private rite ofconstruing a meaning (Le Breton, 2000a, 2002a). The trials that adolescents inflicton themselves with unrivalled lucidity are a rude ritualization of a painfulpassage. They represent ‘transitional’ moments, or rather their bodies themselvesbecome a transitional object thrown harshly at the world in order to pursue apath full of confusion. Risk-taking in adolescents, as defined by the public healthinstitutions, stems from suffering and a break in the link with society; it consti-tutes an attempt to symbolize their place in the community and an attempt torediscover their place therein. Thus, through a deviant, dangerous path, eachadolescent is searching for personal legitimacy.

Risk Awareness

Adolescents don’t have the same fatal, irreversible vision of death that theirelders do. Each has a tendency to feel that they are ‘special’, different fromothers, outside the common law. Death is still a vague notion in their eyes andthey feel it cannot affect them – it only affects other people. In parallel, they testit, play with it like a dangerous partner that may grant self-esteem to those whoconfront it with open eyes. Paradoxically, this inflation of the ego is also basedon an inner need to show others that they can react fearlessly. The fear of losingface or the need always to show a specific skill is a major source of risk-taking.Adolescent narcissism generates a paradoxical feeling of invulnerability andfrailty. Elkind (1967) calls this specific self-image a ‘personal fable’, which iscommon in adolescence and can sometimes lead adolescents to endanger theirlife, persuaded that they can cope with the situation and that the frailties ofothers do not affect them. This feeling is ideal for triggering actions which canpotentially cause considerable harm. Playing games involving risk nourishestheir confidence in their own resources, whereas everyday life often causes acuteawareness that reality seems to slip through their fingers. Attitudes such asrecognizing the need for security, or weighing up decisions and actions, and

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searching for information are more rare among young people than adults.Adolescents are far more attracted by the gratification of their peers and narcis-sistic restoration, wanting to prove that ‘they can do it’ and so the awareness ofdanger often eludes them.

A number of behaviours perceived as risk-taking by young people belong tothe category of minor offences: taking the bus without paying, driving withouta licence, baiting the police or running the risk of being picked up by the police,shop-lifting or lying to parents, forging their parents’ signature for school docu-ments, smoking out of the bedroom window, etc. These actions are more closelyrelated to experimental behaviours and are not necessarily repeated. Theydemonstrate a playful exploration of the world around them. Even if these behav-iours may have significant impact, they are not demonstrations of radical risk-taking, but are attempts to be independent from their parents, seek newsensations and a common means for adolescents to test how much room formanoeuvre they have in society.

Risk-taking behaviours are not all rooted in excess – they sometimes lie inabstaining from taking certain precautions when in a precarious state of health.Non-observance of prescribed treatment is sometimes encountered in adoles-cents, in particular in terms of taking medicine to stabilize their condition aftera transplant or for chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma. Young peoplefind it very hard to bear their subordination to their illness and dependence ondoctors who dictate their behaviour. They feel they are missing out on life. Anda brush with death or the resurgence of symptoms excites their personal sover-eignty. They feel their life belongs to them again since they can control the hourof their death. They can now break with this insupportable reliance on otherswhenever they want to.

Risk-taking behaviours also refer to unconscious motivations when adoles-cents feel that meaning is crushed, that their life is worthless, that they can’texpect anything from anyone any more, etc., and this is resolved in a tension-releasing act. The act replaces the impossibility of putting the feeling into words.Since it is difficult to think the event through, the body takes the fore. Psycho-analysts speak of acting out. An adolescent is given a bad mark in a subject hehad worked hard at, or has just learned that his girlfriend is going with someoneelse, or that his parents have finally decided to separate. He reacts by an immedi-ate act which is very similar to a cry – he throws himself out of the window, takesmedicine from the family medicine cabinet, runs away from home, suddenlybecomes very violent, drinks alcohol with his friends before recklessly driving acar, or carves into his flesh, cuts himself, etc. ‘I don’t know why I did it, it justhappened all of a sudden, I couldn’t take it any more’, says a 16-year-old girl who





swallowed medicine because she had ‘heard that it works and doesn’t hurt’. Sheis aware that there is a danger, but it is mixed up with her wish not to be thereany longer. Health care and self-preservation are not exactly consuming passionsfor adolescents and they believe they have inexhaustible resources of vitality andhealth.

Awareness of the risk run can be very nebulous for the person who puts theirlife in danger. In this instance, risk-taking stems from a feeling of not sharing thesame contingencies as others, of being indestructible. It galvanizes a narcissisticattitude which can help young people to rebuild themselves – if the outcome isfavourable. Thus, zipping in and out of the traffic on a motorbike, going throughred traffic lights or ignoring stop signs, driving too fast on country roads or inthe town to show off their skill, which is called into question by this incessantneed to prove that they can do it, racing or taking dares with friends in the citystreets with stolen cars, baiting the police, burning cars, etc. – all these behav-iours relate more to a personal affirmation of skill and a feeling of omnipotencein young people who don’t consider death or accidents as something that couldtouch them. Self-preservation does not really affect adolescents since they areconvinced that they have an inexhaustible source of health.

In games containing an element of danger, awareness of death may add spiceto the act, even if those who are undertaking the task believe that they can do itand are convinced they will get through it with distinction and courage. Thisoften involves a dare carried out while others watch, stimulating a moment ofintensity of being and then generating the feeling of value and courage. In April2000 in Strasbourg, to imitate another person who had done the same thing theday before, a young boy of 15 laid a bet with his friends watching him from abridge, and ran across a motorway. He was knocked down by cars and was seri-ously injured. For some months now, youngsters have been walking on railwaylines and jumping off just as trains fly past, frightening the train drivers whodon’t know what to do in the circumstances. The ‘strangling game’, which hasmany variations, consists in creating a sensation of suffocation to experience anintense moment of earth-shaking sensations before coming back to one’s sensesor being resuscitated by friends or taken to hospital. Another activity consists incrossing the street with one’s eyes closed, leaping out at the last moment in frontof a car in the hope of getting past it just in time, seeing who will be the last oneto pass under an automatic garage door, climbing on to roofs, up trees, etc.Deliberately disregarding safety rules in training workshops in order to impressothers is common practice. Dangerous behaviour on mountain bikes, town bikes,motorcycles, or when roller skating, skateboarding, etc. all lead to injuries whichcan be serious. The influence of peer groups is often apparent in the dares young





people give each other, and in the self-esteem that can be gained through suchpractices.

During adolescence, when the feeling of identity still has a fragile foundation,the body becomes the battleground for one’s identity. The body is bothinescapable and the root from which identity stems, but it is also frighteningbecause of the changes it is undergoing and the responsibilities it implies towardsothers, not to mention its developing sexuality. It is a threat to the id. However,it is well and truly there, always to hand as it were, like a fixture in the world,and the only tangible permanence of self – the sole means of taking possessionof one’s existence.

This ambivalence towards the body makes it a transitional object (Kafka,1969), destined to absorb the shocks adolescents believe they receive during theirproblematic integration in the world. They nurture it and flay it alive, care forand mistreat it, love and hate it according to circumstances and with a variableintensity linked to their personal life history and the capacity of their friends andfamily to provide a frame for it. When the boundaries are not drawn, adolescentstend to focus on their body in their search for them. They throw themselvessymbolically (and in reality) against the world to establish their personal sover-eignty, stand out compared to others, give birth to a self buried in suffering, andfinally to decide between what is outside and what is within, laying down apropitious zone between the inside and the outside. The body is a materialcomponent of identity which helps young people to find their place in the fabricof the world, but not without going through turbulence and not withoutmistreating it (Le Breton, 2002b, 2003).

Vertigo

Vertigo, leaping into a void, is a constant practice in adolescent risk-taking. Oursociety is engrossed by the theme of the void. Today’s psychotherapists talkabout how narcissistic disorders are prevalent among their patients, who experi-ence a feeling of insignificance, of emptiness, of not existing in the eyes of others,etc. Our path is no longer marked out by meanings and values; in other words,the ground is slipping away beneath our feet. Hence the feeling of vertigo, fallingand the loss of any frame. And yet a deliberate search for vertigo has also beenthe main feature of a series of physical and sporting activities which have beenincreasingly popular in our society since the 1980s.

In its more play-oriented forms (skiing, surfing, sports and physical activities,etc.), the danger one puts oneself in is minimal and, in principle, controlled bythe technical skills acquired and an ability to assess the dangers at hand. But at





its most radical level, that is, with adolescent risk-taking, the fascination forvertigo is a life-and-death game where the cost of intense feeling may be paid forby falling, an accident, collision or an overdose. The potentially deadly aspect ofthis search is not entirely unknown – the French term for getting one’s kicksliterally means exploding into pieces. And the term comes up strikingly whenyoung people drink too much alcohol or resort to taking drugs such as ecstasy,in the search for intoxication, vertigo, self-forgetfulness and all the more or lesscontrolled forms of entering a trance. Speeding on the roads gives rise to the samefantasy of all-powerfulness. The feeling of vertigo and leaping into the void alsopermeates the psychology of the runaway: he has escaped the safety of his formerlandmarks for a time and has turned himself over to chance on the road, in a sortof fall towards the horizon. We find this again in delinquent behaviours and inurban riots where transgression simultaneously generates the jubilation ofconfrontation and an intensity of being. And the same is true for occasional actssuch as riding a motorbike without stopping at any halt signs or red lights insearch of powerful sensations.

Adolescents temporarily control a relationship with the void where their lifeis precariously balanced. At this point, where they are a hair’s breadth fromdisaster, they nonetheless feel that they have, at last, grasped the better versionof their self. These vertigo-based activities can be transposed onto anther scene –the lack of social and cultural references and the blurring of landmarks – but theyalso absorb destructive effects on an individual plane. They combine vertigo andcontrol, letting go and all-powerfulness. They encourage taking an unstable exist-ence in hand. They lay down the conditions for a homeopathy of vertigo: westruggle against a feeling of emptiness by throwing ourselves into the void.However, if an accident occurs, we are reminded that this brief moment has acost, in a tight game where death may be the price to pay. Thus, alcohol abuse,taking toxic substances and drugs give the individual the feeling of belonging andcasting off the confusion anchored at the heart of life, at last. A rude awakeningand the after-effects of the night before are the price to be paid for such dreams.

Masculine and Feminine in Risk-taking Behaviour

Boys are more affected than girls by the consequences of risk-taking with muchhigher mortality and morbidity rates. But both use their bodies as transitionalobjects. The body is an anchor which is cast into the depths of a confusing world,where there are vast spaces of emptiness. This anchor helps them find a hold andbuild themselves up around a solidity they have at last found. A number ofstudies show that boys use more radical means when staking their physical





integrity than girls do. They project their bodies against the world, they wrestlewith themselves in their search to find limits, they force a meaningful path in theirlives by symbolically or really dicing with death: dangerous games, drunkenness,reckless driving on motorbikes or in cars, suicide, delinquency and physicalviolence. Such behaviours are often enhanced by a reference to an image ofvirility (speed, drunkenness, delinquency, etc.). Sometimes, they take on anelement of initiation to an age category through the cultural imagery associatedthereto: speeding, the first cigarette, the first time they get drunk, or discoveringhow easy the transition towards violence is. Self-affirmation is expressed throughbehaviours associated with bravery and virility.

Their elders are hardly in a strong position to dissuade them from these activi-ties, since they themselves followed the same patterns previously, or continuedin the same vein for many years. Furthermore, films and magazines underline theattraction of these behaviours, stigmatizing prudence – which is perceived aspusillanimity or weakness. In the United States, twice as many male adolescentsdie of unintentional injuries than female adolescents (Bell and Bell, 1993: 170 ff.).The risk of boys being involved in violent situations is twice as high as for girls,and the criminality level is double that of girls (Cloutier, 1994). While three boyskill themselves for every girl, suicide attempts by boys leave them with fewerchances of survival. The means employed are brutal and damage the body’sintegrity – hanging and firearms, for example. Although suicide attempts by girlsare more numerous than boys, they use less aggressive means with the aim ofpreserving the body image – notably taking an overdose of medicine or self-harm.

While girls often take psychotropic and other drugs and smoke, today theytend to turn to alcohol more and their search to be in a repeatedly drunken statehas become a problem. They internalize their lack of being (through headaches,nausea, depression, pain, fainting, spasmophilia, etc.). Physical complaints are asign of a negative reaction to a changing body which they have difficulty inaccepting, especially in terms of sexualization – a cast-off body whose feminin-ity is barely accepted and which has to suffer to prove its existence. Girls areoften victims of eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia), they often become pregnantin their teenage years, forcing them to terminate their pregnancies or becometeenage mothers. This is especially true among girls who have many siblings orwhose parents have separated or are in a situation of conflict; or whose parentsare out of work or dependent on temporary jobs. These girls’ school work isoften poor and their self-esteem low. The child that they give birth to or abort isa way of showing their value, albeit unconsciously, by binding themselves to thenotion of maternity.

Judith Green (1997) shows how accounts of accidents affecting children aged





from 7 to 11 years help build the self; they form a significant part of the children’sreputation, help to strengthen the moral boundaries of the group they belong toand direct appropriate behaviour patterns. In addressing the danger encounteredthrough speech, accounts of accidents express ways of conforming as well asbeing self-enhancing, especially in the case of boys. Recounted time and again,they extol the same virtues. The narration sets the stage for a competent, matureand brave actor. The identity-oriented account is a means of showing oneself ina good light. However, accounts differ greatly according to whether they are toldby girls or boys. Girls’ accounts stress their responsibility towards others; theyfeel concerned by what happened to them and question their behaviour. Theyspeak of their good luck in being there at the moment an accident occurred wherethey could be of assistance, or regret being unable to prevent the accident fromhappening. Or if they themselves were involved, they reproach themselves fortheir thoughtless behaviour. They tend to stigmatize the risks taken by their play-mates.

On the other hand, the boys’ accounts are focused on the fact that theyweren’t afraid and that they are braver than girls or their peers, by translatingadversity into a demonstration of excellence. They displayed their braverythrough dangerous behaviour (for example riding a bike on the road in spite ofbeing told not to by their parents) and after the accident, they weren’t frightenedat the sight of blood, or proved that they could endure pain. Boys are proud ofshowing their independence of mind, speaking of their parents’ warnings ofdanger as being secondary until they have confirmed the existence of dangerthrough their own experience. The fact of having experienced an accident alreadyat their age gives rise to a feeling of exaltation that they managed to survive andtherefore demonstrated a personal value. However, the assessment by otherchildren subtly tempers this situation. If a child has many accidents, especially inthe case of a boy, far from proving his budding virility in the eyes of the otherchildren, he risks gaining a reputation of being clumsy and hence being held inlow esteem by his peers.

Rites by Ordeal

These behaviours are a means of staking one’s very existence against death to givea meaning and value to one’s life. The adolescent sets his body at stake to findhis place in the fabric of the world. He is entering a symbolic exchange withdeath: I will risk my life, but I if I come out of this alive, I expect death to giveme in exchange a feeling of omnipotence and exaltation which was missing frommy life. I accept the risk of paying with my life for this moment of omnipotence,





which will at last give me the feeling that I exist. But death can call the player inat any time. In terms of addiction, there is often a moment where death calls theplayer in, as if there were a weariness in constantly responding to a request forthat extra meaning which enables one to continue in life.

Unable to find the life game within themselves, adolescents play with death asif they were backing their last card. This may not be the best solution, but it isthe only one the adolescent can find, one that he must accept against his will.Although he is unaware of the fact, this death game is a gamble to exist, theultimate means of keeping in contact with a world which in part is eluding himin spite of his efforts. Placing the body at the centre as an anchor between theworld and one’s self is a way of taking a physical form in a problematic world,of being sure of one’s personal value by turning away from the symbolic dimen-sion of society and by investing what it denies (death) to impose one’s owninternal needs. For the adolescent, society has implicitly pronounced anunfavourable judgement against him. He doesn’t recognize or barely recognizeshimself in what he perceives in society. As to the people who are important tohim on an affective plane, they do not reassure him as to the value of his ownexistence. Since society is disqualified, he turns to another metaphysical, butpowerful authority – if he manages to escape death after being in contact with itfor a moment, he receives another response, and this time it is favourable, empha-sizing his personal value in spite of everything. His behaviour is not always lucidor clearly weighed against the possible consequences, and the unconscious playsa significant role.

The fact of being born or growing up is no longer sufficient to ensure one’srightful place in the social web today; one has to conquer the right to exist. Theadolescent discovers meaning and value in his life by solving a personal crisis andno longer by automatically acknowledging his place in his society’s system ofmeaning. When he turns to risk-taking, he is soliciting death at the unconscious,symbolic risk of his life. When other modes of symbolization fail, eluding deathand surmounting the test provide the ultimate proof that his existence issupremely protected. The ordeal, this barbaric form of fate, has pronounced ajudgement in his favour. Death has been overcome symbolically and so theadolescent can continue to live, in the light of a new legitimacy. It fosters arenewed intensity in the very fact of living and restores a more propitiousrelationship with the world. In its brute form in our society, the ordeal is a questto find a meaning which the adolescent subordinates, without knowing it, to therisk of dying by giving himself a fair chance of survival. Furthermore, themeaning of the ordeal comes afterwards: the seed of power is sown whenthe significant risk of dying is taken, and can sprout later for a time, although its





potential existence at the moment of the trial was not suspected in the slightestby the adolescent.

Dying or coming through the trial unharmed are equally weighted and forma sort of initiatory hurdle which the adolescent cannot get over without beingchanged to a greater or lesser degree. The setting of the ordeal structurally callsfor a symbolic exchange with death in order to be protected in life. One risksone’s life to save it all the more effectively. A general feeling of being the chosenone is aroused by this successful passage through the outer boundaries of deathif this is a result of the person’s own decision, including in terms of the gravityof the event. On the other hand, if the symbolic confrontation with death stemsfrom an external source (aggression, accident, etc.), if other people die or areinjured, it is a tragedy, a violent act and even in the case of survival, causes afeeling of guilt or dereliction. Ordeal implies that a person has a certain amountof control – albeit infinitesimal – over the circumstances of the trial. If the personis the inactive passenger in a car or a train accident, he is passively bound up ina movement whereby he suffers the consequences without being able to influ-ence them. Whatever the repercussions are, the trial is not an ordeal, but is oftentraumatic.

Ordeal is a person’s response to the crisis he is undergoing. He sets up his ownchallenge to the adversity he believes is set against him. The ordeal dimension isclear in, for example, the countless suicide attempts which affect young gener-ations – hundreds of attempts for one successful suicide. Those who die tend touse radical means with little opportunity for being saved. The figures publishedby the Fondation de France (1997) give 37 percent of suicides by firearms, 26percent by hanging, 3 percent by drowning and 14 percent by swallowing toxicsubstances. In these suicide attempts (especially medicine overdose or cuttingveins), there is a question of handing oneself over to the unpredictable effectsthese will have on the metabolism, or the unknown consequences of the fall inthe case of jumping out of a window, or deliberately risking accidents in a car oron a motorbike. All this is conducted without knowing if the emergency serviceswill arrive or not. But if the adolescent gets through, he often feels as if he hasshed his old skin by being able to look death in the face. Ordeal is virtually non-existent among elderly people, for example, where the act of suicide is, in theory,undertaken by radical means without any opportunity for being saved. But thisunconscious knife-edge game is present in most of the risk-taking behaviours ofyoung people, even if it is not always totally radical.

Ordeal provokes a group reaction; it produces a painful emotion; it strength-ens the links surrounding adolescents through the care or attention which is thengiven. Everything then depends on the attitude of those who are important on





an affective plane in their eyes. If the attitude remains indifferent, repetition ofthe ordeal is more brutal or the risk-taking behaviour becomes an addiction. Onthe contrary, if there is a strong reaction, with people rallying round and showingtheir affection, the relationship of exchange is rebuilt on a new basis and certainmisunderstandings may be erased. This is true for many suicide attempts byadolescents who can then often revive a dialogue which had broken down orprove to their relatives that they exist in all their individuality. The risk of deathbecomes the ultimate weapon in their search for acceptance. Even if the personwas the only one to confront the danger, even if no one knew of the trial accom-plished, by eluding death and through the feelings experienced when in contactwith danger, he discovers unexpected resources in himself which enable him totake control of his existence once more. The feeling of being safeguarded fostersa redoubled energy invested in living life and enables the adolescent to find afuller meaning in this adventure.

Individual Rites of Passage

Under our eyes, new, individual rites of passage are emerging and becomingwidespread. However, they no longer embody the ritualized movement throughthe passage from adolescence to adulthood, but tend to represent the potentialaccess to a meaning which has at last become tangible. The issue of having a zestfor life dominates all others in risk-taking among the younger generations. Theseadolescents are looking for self-revelation through an adversity which is entirelyfabricated: it is a deliberate quest for a trial, acting out, inattention or clumsinesswhose meaning is far from being immaterial. The degree of consciousness whichgoverns this clash with the world is immaterial here; the unconscious plays anessential role in the event. The dominant factor is an internal need. If the outcomeis favourable, this symbolical or real approach to death triggers off the power forpersonal metamorphosis which revives the zest for life – at least for a time. Itregenerates personal narcissism, restores meaning and a system of values whensociety fails in its anthropological function of saying why life is worth living, whybeing is preferable to not being. In the intoxication of danger or in its aftermath,the adolescent often has a feeling of birth. He is ready to enter into the socialweb and become a partner in the exchange.

Resorting to the notion of the rite of passage (or ordeal) as defined by ethnol-ogy through the study of traditional societies, does not mean we can do awaywith analysis; it demands that it should be explored once more in the context ofcontemporary western societies. In the strictest sense, while the conclusionsreached are close, form differs radically here and in other aspects. In traditional





societies, the rite of passage is a necessary and appropriate moment forming abridge to adulthood through a series of steps determined in advance by custom.It ensures social transmission and never self-reference. It is a community event,experienced by a group of peers together, and is always conducted under theresponsibility of the elders – never between members of the same age categoryalone. It is an essential moment of filiation. It is a time of happiness for thenovices who will soon be changing their status. At the end of the ceremonies, theinitiates enter into their father’s or mother’s group as full partners in the socialexchange; the link with their ancestors is formed. Never again will they ask ques-tions about the meaning or value of their life; they know they are foreversupported by the social web. In the same way, these rites of passage are highlysexualized – they are the consecration of belonging to a gender through precisebody markings (circumcision, excision, scarification, etc.).

In our contemporary societies, risk-taking runs against the tide of this socialprocess. Access to a new dimension of the zest for life is not built up in a socialcontext by a series of steps in keeping with an established rite under the eyes ofthe social community. There is no progression marking out these trials to makethem desirable or predictable. They are deeply solitary events. They occur in acontext of ruptures in social links, which are either real or experienced as such.They arise from impulsive acts or reckless undertakings in their ultimate quest.Their source lies in the suffering involved in not finding a meaning to one’s life.The response provided is often temporary, sometimes insufficient to ensure afeeling of personal value. Society is hostile to them and sets up preventivestructures to stifle them. They often give rise to pain for the parents (in sharpcontrast to the joy experienced by parents in traditional societies). The self-metamorphosis generated by the trial cannot be transmitted to others and doesnot therefore stem from any collective memory. Moreover, the behaviours stemfrom the impossibility of coming together, and they cause infinitely more suffer-ing, injuries and tragedies than jubilation. Success in the trial is never sure andthe price to pay for it is very high. Far from being attested by the socialcommunity, the ‘ontological mutation’ (Eliade, 1957), when, by chance, it occurs,is a strictly private affair.

Talking of an individual rite of passage for young generations today is tanta-mount to evoking recourse to a secret, solitary form of symbolizing the zest forlife. Here, it is a question of an individual rite of passage insofar as the act ispersonal and has no value except for the person who braves it; the adolescent isnot always lucid as to the goal of his search and it doesn’t alter his social statusif he gets through the trial. It is the very being of the person that is changed ona virtual plane (this may not happen and experiencing the ordeal may be a failure





which does not bring about the desired internal change and may worsen the situ-ation even further). Yet it is nonetheless a rite of passage because of the anthropo-logical structure it contains: the revelation of identity and the ontological changepursued with a greater or lesser degree of lucidity. And it is a rite of passagebecause of the sociological eminence of the phenomenon, the fact that it is wide-spread, taking on varying and individual forms. These private rites imbued withself-reference are a form of poaching meaning, an intimate rite of smuggledgoods, fostering social integration and the feeling of being protected, legitimate,of at last having discovered a meaning to one’s life. Ordeal-type behaviour in itsinfinite diversity is a painful, private response to failings in culture and society.It is the ultimate resort, the last chance a person gives himself, the last chance ofsomeone who thinks that in any case they have nothing to lose. In our societies,the rite of passage is a painful response to the exclusion of meaning.

This elusive approach to death functions as an anthropological structure.Putting oneself on trial on an individual basis is one of the modern forms crys-tallizing one’s identity when everything else fails. The adolescent metaphoricallyquestions death by sealing a symbolic deal to justify his existence. Much of thisrisk-taking gives the impression of living through the contact it sparks off withthe world, the feelings engendered, the jubilation experienced and the self-esteemit generates. Far from being totally destructive, it stems from experimenting withone’s self and tentatively exploring one’s limits. It leads to acceptance by one’speers, a general feeling of ‘being an adult’, whereas prudence and moderation arerarely associated with gratification and tend to generate irony. A more appropri-ate relationship with the world is restored. Sometimes the trial may even lead toa feeling of personal rebirth and is a form of self-initiation.

Translated by Helen Sontag

Note1. For an in-depth study of the themes examined in this text and their extension to ‘extreme’ sports

or physical and sports activities involving risk-taking, see Le Breton, Passions du risque (Métailié, 2000)and Conduites à risque: des jeux de mort au jeu de vivre (Paris: PUF, collection Quadrige, 2002).

ReferencesBell, Nancy J. and Robert W. Bell (1993) Adolescent Risk Taking. Newbury Park: Sage.Cloutier, Richard (1994) ‘La Dynamique du sport extrême chez les jeunes’, Frontières 6(3).Csiksentmihalyi, Mihaly (1977) Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Eliade, Mircea (1957) Mythe, rêve et mystères. Paris: Gallimard.





Elkind, David (1967) Egocentrism in Adolescence. Child Development 30.Green, Judith (1997) ‘Risk and the Construction of Social Identity: Children’s Talk about Accidents’,

Sociology of Health and Illness 19(4).Haim, André (1969) Les Suicides d’adolescents. Paris: Payot.Kafka, John S. (1969) ‘The Body as a Transitional Object: A Psychoanalytic Study of a Self-mutilating

Patient’, British Journal of Medical Psychology 42.Le Breton, David (2000a) Passions du risque. Paris: Métailié.Le Breton, David (2000b) ‘Playing Symbolically with Death in Extreme Sports’, Body & Society 6(1).Le Breton, David (2002a) Conduites à risque: des jeux de mort au jeu de vivre. Paris: PUF.Le Breton, David (2002b) Signes d’identité: tatouages, piercings et autres marques corporelles. Paris:

Métailié.Le Breton, David (2003) La Peau et la trace: sur les blessures de soi. Paris: Métailié.Lupton, Deborah (1999) Risk. London: Routledge.

David Le Breton is Professor of Sociology at the Université Marc Bloch de Strasbourg and a memberof Laboratoire URA-CNRS Cultures et sociétés en Europe. He is the author of Anthropologie du corpset modernité (PUF), L’adieu au corps (Métailié), Eloge de la marche (Métailié), Signes d’identité:Piercings, tatouages et autres marques corporelles (Métailié), Conduites à risque: des jeux de mort aujeu de vivre (PUF), La Peau et la trace: sur les blessures de soi (Métailié).





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