“Everyone Has Complex Trauma”: New Alliances, Rising Markets, and Emerging Therapeutic Challenges in the Treatment of Young Offenders in Chile

Cult Med Psychiatry. 2026 Nov 13;51(1):7. doi: 10.1007/s11013-026-10025-0.

ABSTRACT

This article examines the growing centrality of the clinical category of complex trauma within the Chilean juvenile justice system, analyzing its reception, dissemination, and effects on professional practice. Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Juvenile Probation Service in Santiago de Chile, the study shows how the discourse of complex trauma has fostered new institutional alliances, shaped an emerging educational market for professional training, and generated therapeutic challenges in interventions with young offenders. Despite the growing traction of developmental neuroscience as a principal explanation for the sequelae of childhood adversities, practitioners pragmatically combine neurobiological, psychological, psychodynamic, and moral reasoning in their daily work to address offenders’ suffering. In doing so, they continuously place notions of guilt, culpability, responsibility, and agency into tension, redefining them. The findings suggest that the expansion of complex trauma transcends the clinical domain, engaging political, economic, and cultural dimensions that reconfigure the relationships between victimization, delinquency, and social reintegration. The article concludes that complex trauma has not only redefined the etiology of juvenile delinquency but also reshaped the criteria through which culpability and the potential for redemption are determined, thereby redrawing the boundaries of institutional interventions.

PMID:43026410 | DOI:10.1007/s11013-026-10025-0