Jan 13 2009
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Part 2
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (Gill Scott Heron)
Chapter 12
From Then to Now (cont)
Part 2
(Extensively Revised 1/13/09)
I have not spoken of specific practices of analysis of adolescents that pervaded the ‘Then’ period. Adolescents are far more susceptible and more at risk than adults to many of our psychoanalytic theories and practices, and their application. Unlike adults, who can theoretically defend themselves from analysis if they feel their treatment unsatisfactory, adolescents can’t leave.
Adolescent analysis during the ‘Then’ period, often presented the adolescent with an array of particularly severe administrative problems regarding their psychoanalysis. This was to say nothing about their actual illnesses. During the ‘Then” period, a number of factors were dramatically different when compared to the ‘Now’. (At least as analysis is done by me ‘Now’) The emotional life of an adolescent, in the ‘Then” period, was considered largely to be made up of unconscious pathological infantile fantasies. That is to say, the actual issues that plagued these same adolescents were reduced to a group of infantile unconscious fantasies. These fantasies were usually considered to be the cause of most if not all of the ‘bad’ housed in the adolescent psyche. This of course caused them to be ‘bad’. Get rid of these ‘bad’ fantasies and you had a ‘healthy’ adolescent.
Adolescents also had to contend with even more stridently defensive and assertive analysts. (keep in mind that many of us then, no matter hopelessly wrong we may be, felt to an absolute certainty that we knew how adolescents should live). We have certainties, adolescents have other certainties. These certainties couldn’t be more different. Further, adolescents were most often brought, usually unwillingly by parents, so that they may be analyzed. Their parents’ motive was their belief that their adolescent was ‘crazy’, perverted, drug addicted, etc..
The adolescents had to face another, usually unbeknownst to them, array of ‘experts’, including their analyst and the supervisor of the analyst, if one were in place. The pressure put by this supervisor on the analyst, as well as pressure put directly and/or indirectly on the parents, was often motivated by the desire to continue the treatment of the adolescent. This pressure was often times immense. If all that weren’t enough, there were often study groups who would review cases, filling the air with brilliance. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, as would usually be the case, all of these people shared the same theoretical background.
The net effect of these ‘enemies’ who were not at all impressed by the adolescent’s argument that he hate analysis and must quit, was daunting to both the adolescent and his parents. Faced with such odds and un-understanding opponents, bizarre maneuvers were often threatened or enacted by the adolescent in attempts to find ‘freedom’. I encountered (very rarely) or heard of threats of suicide, threats of sex with as many boys as possible, running away, refusal to attend school, drastic increases in drug use, threats of physical harm to the parents, etc.. (the dimensions of ‘etc’ often being very wide and imaginative) The ‘big’ one from the ‘enemies’ side to the parents was ‘he’ll commit suicide if he doesn’t continue his analysis’. The story reminds me of the line ‘you’ll shoot your eye out’ from the movie “Christmas Story”. That would be to say if there were no air gun (the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle), you couldn’t shoot your eye out. Or put another way, if analysis were continued, there would be no suicide. Or restated, if the gun (no analysis) was given to the adolescent, all one had to do was to wait for the adolescent to blow his brains out. I write this last part somewhat facetiously. If I were only discussing the films “Christmas Storey” or “Animal House”, it would only be humorous. Unfortunately, these events were ‘real’ with ‘real’ impacts.
For whatever it’s worth, I was once personally in exactly this situation—–adolescent son, in analysis, wanted to quit. I wanted to meet with the analyst and his supervisor to get their opinion on this proposal by my son, ‘quitting’. These were people well known to me. Yet, I never talked to the analyst, only his supervisor, a well known British Psychoanalyst who has since returned to England. She said that if I were to let him quit, that I would ‘kill’ him, literally. This idea was indeed very serious. Naturally I asked for material that would back this conclusion since I wasn’t, that day at least, interested in killing my son. There was no discussion, no evidence, no nothing except for the idea that I would kill him. Based on this vacuum of information and my son’s desires, he discontinued his analysis. Ordinary parents, in that same situation, not interested in killing their child, were usually terrified and acceded to the opinion of the analyst. The fact that I was a ‘killer’ permanently ruptured my relationship with Dr. Susannah Isaacs, the British psychoanalyst mentioned above.
This is a ‘Now’ session with Mary, one of a series of five. You may have read a number of ‘Now’ sessions with Mary in earlier chapters, including those included in this series of 5. This is the 3rd session of this series of five. These five sessions will be discussed as a group in a later chapter. The level of trauma and its’ drastically destructive effects on Mary will be seen more and more clearly as further analytic sessions with her are presented. At this point, this point being the time of this 3rd session, it seemed to me that Mary was progressing towards separating herself from these especially onerous elements of her past. It seems that I was wrong although I don’t know what I would have done differently.
3rd session with Mary
“My family makes me so mad.” She said.
“Mad?” I asked.
“Most of the time my dad and one of this girlfriends. It just frustrated me so much.” She said.
“Frustrated?” I asked.
“I don’t know what I think when I get mad.” She said.
“Any particular things that make you mad?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She said.
“Like?” I asked.
“I know this is weird, but seeing my dad happy with one of this girlfriends, made me mad. I don’t really know why. It would fill me up with so much anger. It’s weird. Just hearing my dad, seeing him kiss his girlfriend, anything like that. Especially, my dad is not quiet about his sex life. He’s really not. When they are having sex, they make sure that everyone can hear them. It’s not like “oops, they heard that one”. You could be outside the house and hear them.” She said.
“ Jealous?” I asked.
“It’s just like, I don’t want to hear that, and so often.” She said.
“Often?” I asked.
“Yeah. One time I broke one of my brother’s lamps. My brother would get frustrated too, but he would just go to sleep. I don’t know how he did it.” She said.
“Long time?” I asked.
“Yeah. It was just sooo loud, repetitive. You could hear everything, it was just moaning, you could hear (slaps hands together). Oh, Fricken, I don’t want to know this. It’s gross. I think it would make everybody frustrated just to hear that.” She said.
“Would you ever say anything about it?” I asked.
“I think I mentioned it once or twice. Not very often.” She said.
“Not very often?” I asked
Pause
“Did it seem to you that your dad was aware of how much this bothered you?” I asked.
“My dad knows that I get frustrated. He knows now because he’s still loud about it to this very day. It’s like he doesn’t care. I’m gonna go and do what I’m gonna do. He’d sometimes come and tell me to turn the TV on real loud. I know what they’re going to do. And then she comes out in her robe and she’s standing there, just looking at my dad. My dad says “we’re gonna be in the room a long time, so just turn up the TV.” She explained.
“So Carrie would also not try to be quiet?” I asked.
“Oh no. She’s frickin loud. She is the second loudest one. Gloria was the loudest. But sometimes Carrie could be louder than Gloria. Like Gloria will moan when my dad touches her right here. He’d just touch her here and she moans, and we’re sitting right next to them. I don’t want to know. Like my dad will just touch her on her hand and she’ll start to moan. Ugh. Do it in privacy.” She said, disgusted.
“Close the door?” I asked.
“Yeah they close the door. But they’re so loud about it, closing the door didn’t matter. My dad has a whip in his room. He keeps it by his bed and you can just hear him whipping her.” She said.
“The rest of the girlfriends?” I asked.
“She’s the only one I heard of about the whip. I know a little more about them because they are so open about it. Why would you keep a sex toy out in front of your kids? It wasn’t a full on whip thing. It’s just like a stick like thing with things of leather and something where you can hang it. He just hangs it on his curtains. It’s just hanging right there.” She said, disgusted.
“More and more disgusted?” I asked.
“More like angry.” She said.
“Angry?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t be sad about it. I didn’t feel any hurt from it. It would trigger make me punch walls, kicks things, slam doors and then leave.” She said.
“You told me before that you would start banging on your head to not hear things. Try that?” I asked.
“Yeah. It didn’t help. Could still hear it. I haven’t done it in a while they were having sex though. When I was younger, I was more ignorant of that. I didn’t. I wasn’t aware. Now, when I was 11 or 12, I started knowing what it was. And then he started going out with people who were louder and louder. For some reason, every girlfriend he’s had, the first one is quieter and the next one is louder and louder, then louder, then louder. It’s not like middle. It’s just obnoxious. Gloria is the loudest I’ve ever seen. When he touches her on the hand. At the dinner table. Who does that?” She said.
“Obviously Gloria and your father.” I said.
“Yeah, (smiling) I don’t know anybody else whose parents start moaning at the dinner table.” She said.
“I take it that if she would moan like that, then when they were having sex, she would really be moaning.” I said.
“Oh yeah.” She said.
End