At a time when harassment has become part of everyday discourse, understanding the processes that drive and maintain harassment can help us take action. How to counter this form of toxic relationship? Systemicists are mobilizing so that an interactional reading of harassment is taught in national education curricula.

Yann is 9 years old. He's a strong head, a little leader of the gang. Alexis is a good student, shy, introverted, solitary. Yann shoves him, then laughs. Alexis replies “it’s not funny”. The shoving, mocking and intimidation follow one another more and more quickly. Then come insults and bullying. The acts are repeated and the harassment takes hold. The other “Yann gang” get started. The humiliations become daily. Alexis says “Stop! You do not have the right ". Alexis no longer sleeps, withdraws even more into himself, he cries at night, he has a stomach ache in the morning, a headache. His academic results are falling. He eats very little and his parents are worried, trying to understand. He skims the walls on the way to school, he feels dizzy. He is afraid of meeting Yann's gang on the way to school. Rumors come to his ears, horrors about him, about those close to him. Yann, for his part, seems to flourish in his role as all-powerful leader. Alexis knows that some students and adults see what is happening. He feels humiliated, guilty, ashamed, weak, abandoned. He is alone with his pain. He feels chased everywhere, all the time. He doesn't sleep at all anymore. He is afraid, he keeps silent, he ends up talking to his parents about suicide. Then one day in class, he breaks down, takes Yann's things, throws them on the ground violently and leaves the classroom. The teacher says to Alexis: “You are sick. You need to see a psychologist.” The parents are devastated by the teacher's attitude. His vision of things is that it is Alexis who must get help because his psychological discomfort is at the origin of the problem. Alexis' parents are very worried and write to the director who receives them. The director wants to show support towards the teacher and insists by reminding that Alexis was wrong to get angry. Faced with this blocked situation, parents are desperate. As if the situation wasn't already bad enough for Alexis. Faced with the rigidity of the system which does not want to see or hear and will pretend to act, faced with the approach of the educational framework limited to a linear causality relating only to the victim, faced with even more stigmatization of the victim of harassment , the parents' solution could only be to change their child's school.

What are the responsibilities of adults, schools and national education towards the children entrusted to them? What training and tools should be made available to take action? How to take into account the psychological aftereffects? What evolution for the culprit who sometimes escapes authority and rules with impunity? What to do with those around you, with silent witnesses or with those who incite harassment? Alexis' story illustrates the failure of a school system where the designation of a culprit and the sanction are the alpha and omega of the management of harassment. But what happens after? How will the child break away from this labeling? Who will teach Alexis to confront herself? The story is always the same and repeats itself, over and over again.

We observe a 69% increase in school bullying in one year (2022 National Education report). Several national surveys show that girls are victims as much as boys. In CM1-CM2, 2.6% of students experience high levels of multiple victimization related to harassment. This figure is 5.6% in middle school and 1.3% in high school. A survey on harassment, published in February 2024 by the Ministry of National Education and Youth, defines “school harassment between peers” as “the fact, for a student or a group of students, of subjecting repeated negative or even violent comments or behavior to a friend. Law No. 2022-299 of March 2, 2022 brought school harassment into the Penal Code within a “prevention, detection, punishment” policy aimed at isolating, removing and punishing the harasser. The legal system complements the prevention and resolution efforts put in place within educational establishments. Faced with proven harassment, the response becomes judicial. The separation of the culprit and the victim leads to a radical solution: “and the fight ceased for lack of combatants” (Corneille, Le Cid, act IV scene 3). The harasser is sidelined, exonerating the other actors from all responsibility. Are these actions enough? Will the culprit continue his actions in another establishment, then in his life? Will the victim's only response be flight and shame? The interactional and systemic vision of harassment The systemic and strategic approach to harassment offers an interactional vision of the process. It considers the complexity of the system and the interactions in which victim, culprit, witnesses, accomplices, perpetrators and loved ones evolve. The first level of interaction is that of the two main actors who enter into a rigid dance of which they become prisoners. The “harasser” invites the “harassed” into a type of dominant/dominated relationship and the dominated ends up submitting, forced. Thus the process put in place results from the meeting between particular personalities, a series of circumstances (school, rivalries, weaknesses etc.), a context, accomplices...The attempt to defend one fuels the insistence of the the other, excited by the accomplices in his demonstration of all power over a submissive peer. Interactions are thus locked in an upward spiral loop, of one-upmanship, in a perpetual dysfunctional system.

Systemic definition of school bullying

School bullying is a relationship pathology within a complex and repeated dynamic of verbal, physical and psychological violence. It involves not only the direct interaction between the aggressor and the victim. It also includes surrounding systems and circles such as the school, families of affected individuals and broader communities including the pervasive influence of social media. The search for culprits, although intuitive, turns out to be insufficient, even counterproductive given the complexity of the phenomenon. In this conception, each actor and system contributes to settling into a rigid relationship, reinforcing a cycle of submission and domination where one party's attempts at defense and control fuel the other's insistence. This interaction is not limited to the direct relationship between aggressor and victim but is influenced and maintained by the reactions, expectations and norms of different systems. Schools, as primary socialization spaces, families, as primary circles of support and influence, and broader communities, participate in the perpetuation and interruption of this dysfunctional dynamic.

How and why are those around you part of the problem?

Systemic reading questions the context to intervene effectively with the actors in place: other children, the school, parents, health professionals, educators, AESH... How do they act? Are they in a protective posture allowing them to capitalize on resources or in a hyper-protection preventing the child from finding their autonomy? “If we protect too much, we end up weakening” (de Scorraille et al., 2017). On the contrary, in the context of a more authoritarian education, will the victim have a tendency to remain silent so as not to admit his weakness? This is the case for many children who do not dare to tell their parents that they are being bullied, for fear of appearing even weaker if adults intervene. Likewise, involving teaching staff means recognizing that we are weak and that we cannot defend ourselves alone. This is how an authoritarian posture of those around them fuels a feeling of shame, also freezing the harassed in the process of harassment and in the dilemma opposing their desire to be strong and their inability to confront themselves.

How to act?

How can we help our children learn or relearn how to confront? There are several confrontation strategies. Knowing how to confront means adapting your strategy to the context: at what point is it necessary to learn to “not let yourself be pushed around” to use the words of Emmanuelle Piquet (Don’t let yourself get carried away! Payot, 2014) ? For some, it will be necessary to learn to be kind or to manage their emotions in order to win without fighting (de Scorraille et al., 2017), for others it will be a matter of learning to avoid avoiding or to implement new learning such as the idiot game proposed by Dr. Philippe Aïm (2021) in his book Facing school harassment. “This relational learning is essential: it induces in children the ability to manage their relationships well with their peers or, on the contrary, to become vulnerable in the face of aggression” (Marie Quartier, Harassment at school: teaching him to defend himself, Eyrolles, 2016.)

Incorporating proven methods to combat school bullying is crucial. The recent prevention method (Bellon, J.-P., & Gardette, B. (2020)) engages the entire educational community in prevention and awareness actions. (Prevention of school bullying: A systemic and participatory approach. Paris: Éditions de l’Éducation). The 3 figures method, developed by Serge Tisseron (2006) aims to strengthen empathy and cooperation among students. Finally, the shared concern method, developed by Anatol Pikas (2002), offers a non-punitive approach, encouraging perpetrators of harassment to become aware of the consequences of their actions. It’s not just the bullied who needs to change.

The work must be undertaken, depending on each situation, with everyone around them, parents, school staff, the harasser, other students.

Effectiveness in the treatment of harassment situations by systemic specialists®

The systemic approach makes it possible to act effectively. With 80% of cases resolved or improved in 5.4 sessions ¹ and 5.3 months on average, the results of the effectiveness of brief systemic and strategic therapy in cases of harassment invite reflection on the responses that are proposed.

Put debate and conflict management back at the center of education

Too many examples have shown us that avoidance leads to tragedy. Have we forgotten that conflict is inherent to life? Should we not rehabilitate the art of confrontation and debate? Re-introduce the art of rhetoric and the ability to debate and exchange? Because confrontation is debate and debate is democracy. The conflict is today frozen in its terminal phase of violence which the scientist and philosopher Anatole Rapoport identifies in his work Combats, debates and games as the failure of confrontation which transforms any adversary into an enemy. This radicalized position based on certainties where difference is no longer admitted leads to war, seen as the failure of communication and mutual understanding. This forgets that before going to war, there are two other ways of learning to confront each other: through games or through debate. “When language regresses, violence progresses” (Philippe Meirieu) Relationship, play, debate, confrontation must be at the heart of education. Teachers, educators, carers and parents are sometimes helpless in the face of the proliferation of difficult situations involving children or adolescents who are suffering, losing their bearings and sometimes violent. What posture should you adopt in these situations? How to deal with harassment? Faced with this need for solutions and faced with the dismay of teachers and educational staff, the University of Paris 8, in partnership with LACT, created a DU to train teachers and education staff in the systemic approach and managing complex situations.

In order for these systems teaching courses to be integrated into the training of teachers and education staff, we ask the government to get involved in the deployment of the systemic approach, in particular by:

• Recognition of a systemic and interactional definition of harassment,
• The creation of training courses in the systemic approach for teachers, education professionals and health personnel,
• The creation of a center of system specialists who can intervene in establishments on request (CMP, PJJ, hospitals, schools, universities),
• The creation of an observation and evaluation unit for systemic practices in the field of education.

¹ Data 02/2024 from the SYPRENE Practice and Research Network produced from 31 cases of harassment. The initial results of the SYPRENE study (1150 cases) show considerable improvement in patients, with success rates of 80% according to practitioner assessments and 90% according to patients, a significant improvement in psychosocial function reported by patients, and 76% of cases achieving a reliable and clinically significant change. See also Vitry et al. (2021). Effectiveness and Efficiency of Strategic and Systemic Therapy in Naturalistic Settings: Preliminary Results from a Systemic Practice Research Network (SYPRENE). Journal of Family Therapy , 43(4), 516-537.