Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence

The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Gertraud Diem-Wille

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000336993
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

Puberty is a time of tumultuous transition from childhood to adulthood activated by rapid physical changes, hormonal development and explosive activity of neurons. This book explores puberty through the parent-teenager relationship, as a "normal state of crisis", lasting several years and with the teenager oscillating between childlike tendencies and their desire to become an adult.

The more parents succeed in recognizing and experiencing these new challenges as an integral, ineluctable emotional transformative process, the more they can allow their children to become independent. In addition, parents who can also see this crisis as a chance for their own further development will be ultimately enriched by this painful process. They can face up to their own aging as they take leave of youth with its myriad possibilities, accepting and working through a newfound rivalry with their sexually mature children, thus experiencing a process of maturity, which in turn can set an example for their children.

This book is based on rich clinical observations from international settings, unique within the field, and there is an emphasis placed by the author on the role of the body in self-awareness, identity crises and gender construction. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, parents and carers, as well as all those interacting with adolescents in self, family and society.

1

The body ego

There is no period – aside from the time in the womb – when the body alters as much as in puberty. Bodily changes are subject neither to a person’s will nor their control, erupting and eliciting fiery emotions in the adolescent. Later, massive physical changes occur during pregnancy and aging, significantly affecting our emotional state, sense of identity and fears. Freud emphasizes that we cannot directly rule our bodies and that a person cannot experience objective biological gender identity; instead, we “libidinally cathect” our bodies from some inner source, consciously and unconsciously, linking a given drive energy to our body or some part of it. This in turn determines whether a person views his body as native or alien to him or as a mere mechanism – and whether he loves or hates his body in whole or in part. Each spurt of growth or change through growth or illness alters this emotional attitude toward the body. For instance, if a tooth or toe causes pain, a special contingent of attention and devotion is mobilized: the person then thinks only of this tooth or toe – for a given time, it constitutes the center of their emotional life.

During the relatively stable phase of latency, focus is on increasing body skills and mobility, with physical skills, sports and movement in competition with peers constituting important and pleasurable outlets. Now, without prior warning and without the child’s participation, the body they have grown so familiar with undergoes a fundamental change, with no definite end in sight. This physical growth often already occurs at the end of latency, with the attendant emotional impact only following one or two years later: for instance, girls today often experience their first menstruation at the age of ten, without any mental and psychic readiness for motherhood. The great psychic task of adolescence consists of the adolescent finding his own place in the world and accomplishing the transition from his family to the greater world of adults. We will first describe the physiological changes of puberty, and then the adolescent’s emotional and mental answer to them.

How massive these changes are – changes to be mastered within a short period of time – is indicated by the difference in physical appearance between 12 and 20 years of age. Some people change so drastically that they are virtually unrecognizable: out of a little girl emerges a sexually attractive young woman, or out of a little boy a tall, powerful man. Within a few years, adolescents must brace themselves for a change not only in size but also in strength. The body’s new form, an adolescent’s changed voice, newly developed primary and secondary sexual organs: all elicit a new sense of body, with the most essential difference consisting in the biological capacity for becoming a mother or father. As Anderson writes: “What we see clinically in adolescence is the way the body that the adolescent relates to is a container for a whole history of sexual and other primitive object relationships both dyadic and triadic” (Anderson 2009, 1). The adolescent’s massive bodily growth is accompanied by an alteration in emotional balance, influencing the deepest layers of the personality. Many adolescents arriving in therapy exhibit somatic symptoms such as anorexia, drug abuse and self-harm (slashing, for example) – all indicating deep subconscious fears. Anderson feels that these often bizarre symptoms – that could otherwise point to borderline or psychotic phenomena – should instead be seen as an exaggerated form of normal alteration in the personality. Adolescents now perceive the necessity of defining themselves anew – not only as their parents’ son or daughter, but taking their own place in the world, becoming a potential husband or wife and acquiring the capacity for intimacy and sexuality in a close relationship.

These tasks must be accomplished during a time when the deepest wishes and passions from early childhood are revived. Adolescents must embark on a love relationship to someone of their own age and renounce earlier desires for their parent of the opposite sex. The adolescent must reorder his inner life. Contradictory wishes exists parallel to one another.

The wish to be loved, cared for and nourished – and to possess the source of these qualities – is accompanied by the wish to become independent and attain a better, more interesting place in the world. We will examine the adolescent’s emotional and mental development in later chapters. First, we turn in more detail to physical alterations – not forgetting that both the secretion of hormones and attendant physical changes will awaken and intensify emotional and mental conflicts.

In his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Freud writes of the changes puberty brings:

With the arrival of puberty, changes set in which are destined to give infantile sexual life its final, normal shape. The sexual instinct has hitherto been predominantly auto-erotic; it now finds a sexual object. Its activity has hitherto been derived from a number of separate instincts and erotogenic zones, which, independently of one another, have pursued a certain sort of pleasure as their sole sexual aim. Now, however, a new sexual aim appears, and all the component instincts combine to attain it, while the erotogenic zones become subordinated to the primacy of the genital zone.

(Freud 1905, 206)

Particularly characteristic for this developmental phase is the setting of new priorities, where erogenous zones such as the mouth, skin and anal area – as well as pleasurable observing and gazing – are all subordinated to the goal of sexual unification. However, Freud repeatedly emphasizes that this “partial instinct” (observation, exhibitionism, oral gratification, etc.) also plays an important role in foreplay and in enhancing the sexual act.

1.1 The body as an object of observation

Changes in the female body

One peculiarly adolescent phenomenon can be seen when a girl gazes at great length into the mirror, something that can go on for several hours a day, to parents’ astonishment. To the parents’ great surprise (and often enough, to their irritation), adolescent girls begin to spend considerable time in front of the mirror, examining their changing bodies from all angles, trying on various clothes and posing in front of the mirror – apparently a more satisfying observer than the human eye – as if it were a camera. This mirror-gazing is often subsumed or concealed under the ostensible motives of skin and hair care, blow-drying, etc. Pimples and other blemishes are examined precisely, removed or examined yet again when they become inflamed. Groups of girls go to flea markets, buying clothes for reworking, hats and unusual accessories, which they often turn into surprisingly attractive features. They apply makeup alone or in pairs. They photograph themselves or each other in various poses and facial expressions, then posting the pictures online.

What motivations can be detected in these behaviors? The frequent complaint heard from parents, particularly fathers, is that their daughter has become vain, never tiring of her appearance. But from the psychoanalytic perspective, this accusation is too shortsighted. As discussed earlier, an adolescent’s physical growth, both desired or undesired, is always accompanied by considerable feelings of insecurity. The latency child’s unquestioning, carefree relationship to his well-functioning body is now disrupted. A new relationship, a new sense of the body, must now be discovered. But why do girls then observe themselves so long in the mirror?

The neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine traces this behavior to hormonal changes in the female brain, describing the process as follows:

The teen girl’s brain is sprouting, reorganizing and pruning neuronal circuits that drive the way she thinks, feels and acts – and obsesses over her looks. Her brain is unfolding ancient instructions on how to be a woman…the high-octane estrogen coursing through their brain pathways fuels their obsessions…. They are almost exclusively interested in their appearance…they spend hours in front of the mirror, inspecting pores, plucking eyebrows, wishing the butts they see would shrink, their breasts grow larger and waists get smaller, all to attract boys.

(Brizendine 2006, 31ff )

Figure 1.1 Estrogen-progesterone waves (from Brizendine 2006)

Brizendine holds chemical changes – effects of the estrogen level in the female body – responsible for this behavior (Figure 1.1).

The psychoanalytic perspective focuses on an adolescent’s inner world and asks which early experiences become revived in adolescent behavior. Gazing happily into a mirror is hardly innate – it constitutes a result of learning from experience. Only when a baby or young child has had the experience of being lovingly observed by its father or mother can it internalize a positive self-image. The child experiences: “I am worth loving; I can make my mother’s eyes shine”. Indeed, the baby is metaphorically mirrored in its mother’s eyes, which function something like a lovingly focused mirror in which the baby views itself. Winnicott asks:

What does the baby see when he or she looks at the mother’s face? I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself. In other words the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is related to what she sees there.

(Winnicott 1967, 110)

A mother’s eyes express her feelings towards her baby: if she loves her child, she looks at it lovingly, but if she is full of agitation or depression, her gaze is stiff and seems to pass through her child. The child’s gaze then cannot establish contact to its mother, just as the child cannot feel contained or accepted. André Green (1993) described how a baby might experience its depressed mother, with her empty, expressionless gaze, now devoid of her pre-depression vitality; as Green puts it, the child experiences his mother as “dead” – physically present, but looking exclusively inward, without a mother’s loving gaze at her infant. Green’s concept of the “dead mother” describes the baby’s experience of its mother in depression, as opposed to her normal self. Inside this child, a “spiritual hole” arises where there was hitherto space for the love object (mother). The gaze and attempted contact are no longer possible; the child is left to its own devices and must hold itself emotionally, which it attempts to do through a pseudo-independence and premature maturity.

I can make my point by going straight over to the case of the baby whose mother reflects her own mood or, worse still, the rigidity of her own defenses.

(Winnicott 1967, 112)

Such early experiences form the roots of a child’s personality. Psychoanalysts presume that the emotional reaction a baby evokes from its mother supplies it with a sense of its own “reality” – the sense that it is indeed alive. The baby internalizes this experience, which in turn serves as a basis for the fundamental feeling of self-worth. Only when we have experienced the feeling of being loved and observed, admired, can we love ourselves. Winnicott continues:

To return to the normal progress of events, when the average girl studies her face in the mirror she is reassuring herself that the mother image is there and that the mother can see her and that the mother is en rapport with her.

(Italics in original; ibid, p. 112)

Winnicott believes that girls see not only themselves but (unconsciously) also the image of their mother here. We must remember that no mother or father always looks upon their baby with love. Winnicott speaks of a “good enough mother”, who encounters her baby mainly with love, while sometimes reacting in annoyance, irritation or tension. The adolescent girl now graduates (so to speak) from her mother’s gaze – which is effectively replaced by her own gaze into the mirror, as well as observation by her peer group. Particularly for an adolescent, it is of vital importance to be considered attractive by friends, and to be viewed – gazed upon – affectionately and with interest.

It is a fact that some autistic children cannot look at themselves in the mirror, since – for diverse reasons – they could not embark on a re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The body ego
• 2 Psychosexual development in puberty
• 3 Development of feeling
• 4 Development of thinking
• 5 The search for the self – identity
• 6 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index