Adolescent Psychoanalysis

(Anonymous comments may be left by clicking the response button at the end of each section)

Adolescent Speak

Chapter 2

Part 2

There is a song by Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Thorofare Gap”

“Sometimes I consider my pace
I’m reminded of a train gathering speed for the climb to the pass;
In whose shadow it already lies
A small metal dragon approaching the ever present ascending rise
To the Seventh Mountain.

Reeling and snaking and leaping it seems
like it wants to come loose from it’s path cast in iron;
But you can’t slow down now
As the Earth has presented a new crest to reach
Without barely a rest from the last one.

Can you wonder what lies beyond?
Though you’ve been there before
And forget about the effort and the strain;
Always ascending, each yard as a mile
To the never ending pull of the steepening grade that’s before you.

A valley, a forest, a desert, a stream,
With an oversized bridge for the trickle beneath;
You remember the torrent it turned to last spring,
From the snow melting fast,
And the river it became in the summer.

Perhaps it is ruin from a fire that has scorched it
So badly that nothing will grow without rain;
To wash away the blackened soil
Now useless until called upon again
In a future as distant and far away as the next range of mountains.

Then take it as far as you see and beyond
With eyes you don’t use enough gather up strength;
As Thorofare Gap
Will await forever you see
When you get there of even before;
It’s no matter. No distance. It’s the ride.

I spent considerable time studying the lyrics of “Thorofare Gap”— from my experience, a variety of dictionaries, interviews, and other sources. Thoroughfare is ‘the main road in town, usually relatively short, predictable, visible, end and beginning’, etc. ‘Gap’ is a word that has many meanings. Of course, one is obvious—a gap, an opening, a gap in the thoroughfare, unpredictable, often unsee-able, etc. ‘Gaps’ are everywhere and are found in everything. We find ‘gaps’ in reasoning, ‘gaps’ in logic, etc.

For adolescents now is now, a moment in time. For most of us analysts, ‘now’ is a combination of the past and predictions of the future. I don’t think that we manage much ‘present’ in our work. The results of this conflict are immensely negative, causing huge problems in the treatment of adolescents and being one of the leading causes of failure. We want to talk about the past and how it predicts the future and adolescents, in all but rare circumstances, live, think and talk in the present. Depending on ones analytic school, we take whatever is supposedly the ‘now’, find how it really is the past relived and how this past will impact the future. The only signs of the present are found in the transference which is, of course, the past in the person of the analyst.

A 16 year old patient said to me “I want to have sex with Mary, but she won’t”. The adolescent is interested in talking about what he means at this point in time. He will want to talk about Mary, why she won’t have sex with him in the present. I ask the patient about Mary, “How come Mary,?” “I don’t know, probably how she looks”. “looks”? “yeah, mostly it’s her hair.” “hair” I question. “Yeah, she has the prettiest hair at school”. “Select girls that way?” I joke. “Pretty much. I know that sounds weird”. “Weird”? “Yeah”, laughing. I mean she is really pretty, and all I see is her hair”.

In this brief episode, this patient analysis is briefly illustrated. From the adolescent’s point of view, a variety of things happened. First, in no definite order, my relationship with the patient maintained itself. Second, his ‘free associations’ are clearly present. By that I mean he was speaking freely, telling me apparently without censorship, what was on his mind. Third, there is clear development of these associations during the course of the session. The unconscious is interpreted, but in a way we are not used to. Statements such as ‘How come Mary?” are interpretations of the patient’s material. By my statement I have called his attention to part of what he is talking about, elements of which he clearly does not consciously know. What I have not done is to try to link his ‘hair love’ to anything, past or future, and certainly have made no attempt at any kind of transference interpretation about me. For a variety of reasons I have not done this. Firstly, I had no evidence. Also, importantly, is that the patient wants to discuss ‘Mary’, ‘hair’ and ‘weird’, nothing else. I can continue in this vein and this and other sessions progressed beneficially. The past, perhaps, in the view of the patient, will or will not arrive in the present. I know by the content that the patient probably has a variety of feelings towards me, one being that he trusts me. What’s on his mind now, however, is about Mary, that she won’t, and this ‘weird’ hair thing. He has no overt interest in talking to me about his estimate of me and even less interest in his past where he probably suspects the ‘hair thing’ comes from. There is undoubtedly a history the ‘hair thing’, but it’s not present yet.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS