Apr 15 2008
Adolescent Psycho-analysis
(Anonymous comments may be left by clicking the response button at the end of each section)
NO DISTANCE, IT’S THE RIDE
Chapter 1
Adolescents and their treatment are the inspiration for this study. There are many qualities of most adolescents that cause them not to accept psychotherapy, let alone psycho-analysis, at least as practiced by many of us. One of adolescent’s most common complaints about psycho-analysis is their unwillingness to accept the theoretical formulations that we use. Adolescents often feel that our ‘psychological statements. show them that they are not listened to, not understood, and further are ‘victims’ of their analyst’s theoretical formulations. These feelings more often than not are the cause of negative therapeutic reactions, acting out in treatment, and often termination of treatment.
The ‘victories’ of adolescents in areas of conflict further embolden them to push the envelope of their rebelliousness. This element, that of being emboldened, is a particular and growing problem these days. Parenting skills and parental support systems have decidedly diminished. Divorce and dysfunctional families are the rule rather than the exception. The willingness of police and school officials to actively intervene in what are often serious problems has decreased remarkably. The legal system has found more and more ways to not intervene and, often for the worse, to find more and more ways to protect the ‘rights’ of minors. Actions that ‘back in the day’ would have put all of us in jail rarely have that result today. For example, recently at Linden Center (see below) a day student stole and wrecked his neighbor’s car. The District Attorney ‘charged’ him with disorderly conduct, not grand theft auto, and he was ‘sentenced’ to 20 hours of community service, in spite of our pleas for more realistic and more substantial consequences.
There are other more ‘serious’ signs of adolescent rebellion. The history of adolescents in this regard is replete with examples of ‘don’t trust the man’, in our case, ‘the man’ being psychoanalysts. Particularly, don’t trust anyone over 30, which describes most of us.
It is virtually always the youth/young adults who begin movements against the establishment, an example being the Viet Nam War protests. Initially, adolescent/young adult protesters were looked at as an anti-war, anti-United States, hippies, and probably ‘commies’, etc. As is often the truth, their energy and perseverance were remarkable. Their position eventually became main stream and lead to the withdrawal of the United States from Viet Nam.
These successes do nothing but fuel the ardor and omnipotence of youth. That, by the way, is not meant to defame these efforts. The virtue of a cause says nothing about the presence or lack of the presents of emotional difficulties. The omnipotence of youth is crucial. I think it allows them to think what may be unbearable to others of us who are older. We, oftentimes, desperately need to have the certainty of ‘knowing’, to give us assurance against the dread of not knowing. Specifically, if you have the faith that you will live forever, there are no problems with uncertainty. You’re certain. Period. This ‘certainty’, by the way is very malleable. Contradictions are not a problem, since you can easily move from one certainty to another. Steps in thought that reach conclusions, can encompass contradictions, even be ‘logical’ in an adult sense, are absent.
The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the 60’s-70’s is a good example of the many that can be found. Although this event was some years ago, its’ relevance to now clear cut.
This movement started with the denial by the University of California at Berkeley administration to allow a speech by Mario Savio. In the 1960s, Savio, a fiery, inspiring orator whose father was a machine punch operator, was an adversary of Clark Kerr, the University of California president, who referred to the university as a factory and dismissed the Free Speech Movement as “a ritual of hackneyed complaints.”
Savio is remembered for the words he spoke on Dec. 2, 1964, from Sproul Plaza in front of Berkeley’s main administration building, to a large crowd of protesters, many of whom took part in a sit-in inside the building and a campus strike.
“There is a time,” he said, “when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
The police arrested 800 of the protesters in what was the largest mass arrest in California history.The sit-in was the climax of three months of student disorders in reaction to the university’s decision to limit the activities of civil rights and political groups on the campus. Students contended that the restrictions abridged their constitutional rights. Savio became a member of the executive committee of the Free Speech Movement, an organization representing a score of civil rights and political groups at Berkeley.
At a news conference after the Dec. 2 action, Savio said it had been the most successful student strike in American history, with only 17 percent or 18 percent of the students attending classes.
After a demonstration two months earlier, Savio was accused of biting a police officer’s left thigh, “breaking the skin and causing bruises.” A fellow demonstrator, now known as Laura X, who heads the Women’s History Library in Berkeley, said Savio loved to tell people that he had apologized afterward to the officer because, as he put it, they were “both working-class kids.”
Explaining why he had risked expulsion for agitating on campus in 1964, Savio cited the time he spent working for civil rights causes in the South earlier that year: “I spent the summer in Mississippi. I witnessed tyranny. I saw groups of men in the minority working their wills over the majority. Then I came back here and found the university preventing us from collecting money for use there and even stopping us from getting people to go to Mississippi to help. Through a change in rules, the university tried to limit the use of the campus for political activities and the recruiting of students for off-campus demonstrations.
When students protested, Kerr and other Berkeley administrators suggested that they were rabble-rousers who were dominated by Communists. But the protesters ranged from a variety of socialists to Goldwater Republicans.
The Free Speech movement that Savio gave voice to became a model for protests. The events of 1964 in Berkeley ushered in a decade of student agitation across the country, culminating in the wide protests against the war in Vietnam.
Savio, when asked late in 1964 what the turmoil had signified, quoted a sentence from “Moby Dick”: ‘Woe to him who would try to pour oil on the waters when God has brewed them into a gale. His confrontational activities did not go unpunished. He was suspended for a time, and was also sentenced to four months in prison for his part in one protest action.” ((c) Paul Halsall Aug 1997, Internet Modern Source Book—from ERIC PACE (New York Times))
Presumably neither parents, nor the University of California nor psycho-analysts intentionally make or have made what they considered to be incorrect rules, rulings or interpretations—–unless one asks the ‘downtrodden’. Parents must maintain order in their homes. They must set examples however unpopular for their children. They must listen, consider and finally decided what is permissible in their homes. And, they must be in a position to enforce those rules. The Universities, likewise, must listen, try to understand, etc., but ultimately must decide the rules and policies of the University. As in the family, they must also have the means to enforce University policies. These are all principles that govern our society, imperfect though they may be.
The University, however, clearly did not listen. There was no effort at understanding. A set of issues that could probably have been negotiated, were not. This situation is mirrored in many families with their children. Often, the family’s attempts at understanding their adolescent children is absent or lacking. Understanding and agreement are very often dissimilar, but are often understood by parents to be so. Perhaps this accounts for the lack of attempts by parents at understanding. Nevertheless, the parent must try to understand their child’s desires, thoughts, etc.
Psycho-analysts use many of the above principles, but with a crucially different slant. Although the analyst certainly has some rules, the emphasis must be on understanding.
‘Understandings’ held by the analyst come from many sources. Hopefully, firstly, from listening to and trying to understand our patients as they are. Our work should not be a debate or fight. Once debating sets in, the experience of what should be analysis, is lost.
However, as well, Analytic schools provide ‘understandings’. Such ‘understandings’ are offered in a variety of ways. The greatest source of ‘understandings’ includes ‘training’ analyses, case supervision and didactic training. Analysts, as parents, as Universities do not belong to an analytic school unless they believe their analytic school to be ‘right’. Our ‘understandings’ are heavily based on our analytic school, the one we know is ‘right’. Our ‘understandings’ are rarely based on ‘understandings’ of our patients. Especially adolescent patients. They really are hard to understand. This The Board of Regents of the university did not hire a Chancellor believing he would be wrong. Analysts, similarly, do not adhere to a particular analytic school believing it to be wrong.
If our ‘truths’ are challenged by our patients, arguments against these challenges, also based on our school of psycho-analysis, are readily available to us. We know the ‘true meaning’ of disobedience, disruptiveness, defensiveness, projection, projective identification, envy, omnipotence, denial, acting out, etc. We are not shy about telling these meanings to our patients. If patients argue we show them how their arguments only confirm our initial interpretation. Further clarification is rarely sought. Put another way, a disagreement is never simply a disagreement to be illuminated, but must have deep rooted psychological/political meanings. Contrary to Freud, we never conclude that a cigar is simply a cigar or a cigar to be investigated.
Bearing in mind that many, if not most, adolescents are sent for treatment and are not voluntary participants, and considering all of the above, for the most part the choices for the adolescent are to either subjugate themselves, argue (usually pointlessly) or demonstrate (leave, refuse to come, sit silently, etc).
Where there is perceived or real injustice, our youthful patients are quick to respond. In this same spirit, adolescents often regard their resistance to analytic treatment as a protest against one more war, in this case the enemies being their parents, psycho-analysis, psycho-analysts and psycho-analytic theories and formulations. We are “stupid, ‘out of it’, ‘out of touch’, ‘do what their parents want’, etc. Demonstrations, defiance, etc., follow. In fact, although this may seem controversial, adolescents who don’t object to analytic treatment, home rules and societies strictures as they generally exist, are or should be suspected as being ill. As what must happen in life, children grow and must separate from their parents (analysts), develop their own lives, values, formulations, etc. Those who do not develop thusly are severely handicapped. This separation and development must also be present in psycho-analysis, and must be able to be contained in analysis.
It is this very spirit, that of rebellion, defiance of elders, questioning of the status quo, plain old questioning etc., which are some of the prime elements that make adolescents so difficult to treat. As would be expected, many of them are particularly sensitive to and expert at ferreting out what they believe are evidences of not being listened to, not understood, not respected, and, as noted above, the victims of psychological formulations that they ‘know’ are wrong, all of which further convince them that they are nothing more than misunderstood victims.