Rémy Verlyck is the general director of the
“
Familles Durables
”
think tank
, founded at the heart of the health crisis in 2021, whose aim is to think about the daily challenges of the 19 million families in France to better support them.
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Harassment, a form of persecution involving repeated hostile words or actions with the aim of demoralizing, is, in short, a psychologically damaging enterprise.
And a scourge.
For several years, France, like other countries, has been experiencing reports of suicides, murders of adolescents, and even children victims of harassment whose origin is the school environment.
Although most bullied children do not commit suicide, the experience leaves serious after-effects.
At an age when neither brain maturation nor identity formation is complete, being a victim of harassment is felt both physically and emotionally for decades.
Stress responses, inflammatory and immune, are affected, as is the vision of oneself and one's place in society.
It is a trauma that weakens the ability to bond, to form a society.
Already in 2021, the words of the senatorial report were resounding: this is a personal drama, “
but also collective.
It restricts individual freedom, undermines equality of rights and shatters the ideal of fraternity
.”
If they do not act, adults become accomplices, or actors, in a serious societal failure, the social cost of which is immense.
The recent freedom of speech and prevention messages – the promotion of the words of victims, the promotion of kindness or empathy – are unfortunately struggling to put an end to this phenomenon which affects all social classes.
The number of children victims of harassment remains tirelessly the same, regrets Professor Anthony Volk, a specialist on the subject, despite the campaigns implemented.
At Brock University in Canada, Anthony Volk is a developmental scientist, mobilizing a multidisciplinary approach and interested, among other things, in parenting, psychopathies, and “why
people do what they do
”.
For Professor Volk's team, harassment would likely be the result of a human developmental adaptation strategy, plunging into the abyss of the ancient history of our species.
Following an analysis of risks and “costs and benefits”, harassers identify that harassing a person, by demoralizing and weakening them, can give them an advantage in accessing limited resources, and therefore a competitive survival advantage.
If this developmental adaptation strategy is identified as beneficial, without risk, it is because the terrain in which it takes root is conducive to it: the society which gives birth to it – today as thousands of years ago – is faulty.
The idea of a potential reaction by a representative of authority (parent, teacher, law enforcement, etc.) neither intimidates nor deters those who become aggressors.
To dominate in order not to be dominated is to choose a very specific strategic move on the chessboard of a society that claims to be egalitarian.
Rémy Verlyck
During childhood and adolescence, what are these resources that would justify fierce competition?
Reputation or dominant status.
This is the subject addressed by sociologist Margot Déage in her work
À l'école des Bad Reputations
(PUF, 2023), the result of years of qualitative studies in 4 schools in Île-de-France.
A reputation can be weakened by jealousy over good academic results, a symbol of conformity to a parental or educational order, against which some adolescents build themselves.
Also, the humiliation or harassment of a weaker person could aim to protect the aggressor from becoming a victim himself, ensuring a dominant position.
To dominate in order not to be dominated, or to conquer, is to choose a very specific strategic move on the chessboard of a society which claims to be egalitarian, but which is nevertheless seriously dysfunctional.
In 2017, Professor Volk's team identified that adolescents most likely to develop harassing behavior are those who – according to the HEXACO personality structure model – are less marked by the traits of honesty and honesty. 'humility.
So far, no surprises.
Another element subject to interpretation calls into question: adolescents whose mothers have less knowledge of their activities would be more likely, according to the team, to become harassers.
But the specific mention of the mother would be wrong to make them the original culprits of the harassment.
This subject recalls the now contested link, established by the American psychotherapist Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990), between autism spectrum disorder and the relationship between mother and child.
A causal link that has caused great difficulties and suffering for too many women and has endangered many couples.
Bullying is enabled by a culture where children grow up in family and educational contexts plagued by serious dysfunction.
Boris Cyrulnik
Two questions then arise.
If this study suggests a preponderance of mothers, is it not because fathers are still too absent from the emotional education of their children?
All studies on this subject converge in this direction, highlighting the cascading benefits of paternal investment.
In 2022, the film Close, directed by Lukas Dhont, underlined with great finesse the drama of the combined effects of the lack of involvement of fathers in the emotional education of their children, and the psychological catastrophe of harassment which leads too many children to suicide.
And if mothers' lack of knowledge of their children's activities is a diagnostic element, can we also underline, behind this failure, the poverty in time or money, loneliness and fragilities resulting from injuries and traumas never taken care of?
We must be careful not to designate easy scapegoats and reflect on the dysfunctional context in which too many people evolve and develop in a non-optimal way.
If children, adolescents, but also adults, identify harassment as an evolutionary advantage, and implement it “successfully”, it is because the culture in which they evolve allows them to do so, and confirms it in their analysis.
If the family context has a significant effect on the potential to harass aggressors, it is because it does not carry out its educational mission.
In an interview dated September 30, 2023, Boris Cyrulnik declared: “
We are living in a moment of “decivilization” and not “wilding”.
To become decivilized is to leave the group, to cease belonging to the community.
For example, some children today are “decivilized.”
Their family is dysfunctional: the parents are little or not present.
These emotionally deprived children risk becoming violent adults.
The brain of a child who is sensory isolated has been shown to atrophy.
These children fall seriously behind in school, have few words available, find themselves in front of screens all day long, etc.
Their emotional environment is also altered by the difficulties of their parents, social insecurity, unemployment, the unsanitary conditions of their housing, etc.
However, it is an illusion to believe that they will be “civilized” by school.
The school will be able to do nothing except teach them hatred.
»
Harassment is indeed a problem of civilization.
It is enabled by a culture where children grow up in family and educational contexts plagued by serious dysfunctions.
It is our responsibility, as responsible citizens and adults, to rethink what constitutes the quality of our family, professional and educational ties.
If one student per class is the victim of harassment, as announced by the new Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet, it is indeed the Republic and our ability to live together – and to have our children live together – which are permanently damaged. in question.