Adolescent Psychoanalysis

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”  (Gill Scott Heron)

Chapter 12

From There to Now (cont)

Part 3

(Extensively Revised 2/17/09)

In the session at the end of Chapter 12, part 3, to put it mildly, Mary had little or no protection from anyone, least of all her father. The concept of “protection”, however, is far too narrow.  Mary neither had that, ‘protection’, nor ‘rearing’. Lest one think that I confuse analysis with raising a child, there remains clear similarities.   If one were to consider what happens in a good analysis to contain in an analytic way an unusual but usual form of rearing, that might not be far off the point. A great teacher of mine told the story of a seminar he conducted.  The question at hand was what to do with the young woman, lying on his couch, an analytic patient.  She had just been told that her husband, whom she deeply loved, had been killed in an automobile accident the day before. To put it mildly, she was deeply in pain, distraught, and feeling utterly hopeless, and sobbing.  The specific question that he raised to other analysts in this group was this:  should one reach down and put a hand on her shoulder by way of condolence?  Many answers were offered, most of which included the touch of condolence.  The answer, according to the teacher, was that one wouldn’t touch her.  Why?  This was analysis.  Was this cold, a sign of indifference?  Hardly.  All one had to do was to know this man.  He was, of course, right.  But, lest anyone be deceived, there could be no doubt that his sadness was conveyed to his patient, without speech or touch.  He is a great analyst.  He is a Kleinian.

The virtues that I have itemized are those I feel must be present in our work for it to have a chance of success.  Protection or its absence comes in many forms, many expected, many not.  One of our duties as analysts is to protect our adolescent patients from us, our theories, our own ends, our inappropriate actions,  etc.. Adolescents don’t come to analysis to learn about our lives, participate in our lives, to be used by us, manipulated by us, etc. If my analyst and his wife were the beginning and end of my ‘protected’, principled analytic training, it is difficult to imagine that I could possibly have turned out at all well. That we cannot absolutely protect adolescents from either themselves or others or ourselves is a truism.  However, we can do our best to analyze our adolescent patients according to their present, not ours, and protect them from, at least, ourselves, by doing good work which amongst other things is not corrupt or usurious, or grandiose or omnipotent. The ends do not justify the means. We must to analyze their ‘ride’, not teach ours.

In spite of some shortcomings in my analytic training, the sum total certainly was and is very useful to me.  Portions of my analytic training, to be sure, did not represent generally recognized principles of psychoanalytic training.   Some of my experiences in analysis were clearly different from the norm, but hardly all bad.   Both in real time, and particularly in retrospect, I learned and experienced many facets if psycho-analysis. Reading about an experience is simply not the same as having the experience.  Reading about corruption is clearly different than experiencing corruption.  Experiencing, perhaps impossibly, the life of adolescents, is crucial. No books are available. Perhaps one could say it is a state of mind.

As I have written about before and will later, perhaps a portion of my experiences in analytic training played a major part in my identification with adolescents. Learning from experience or identifying with experience or sorting out experiences for their value or using experience to learn good from bad, etc., is the essence of useful experience.

Certainly not all the Traditional Americans nor the Kleinians were or are corrupt.  The vast majority were not.  Further, there was a great deal of excellent teaching and supervision by Analysts from both sides of the debate.  My analysis, in ways that I can’t explain, seemed to have a very productive side and then changed, for the worse.  Where what I experienced as actual analysis was, perhaps lasting 4-5 years, the latter 2-3 couldn’t have been more different.  Moral values of the analyst emerged—not mine.  My analyst’s moralistic and theoretical views became the guideposts of my analysis.  In that sense, at that time, my analysis had ended. 

I would like to call the readers attention to one of the major problems in analyzing an adolescent is to analyze them, not with the moralistic or theoretical values of us. However different they may be or at least seem to be, our task is to explore theirs.  There has to be some reason why high school reunions, for most of us, are so important.  There is something about that time that marks an important place and time to revisit.  There seem to be many reasons why this is counterintuitive. Perhaps for many of us this was a time of great turmoil and pain, and joy, yet seductive. I suppose that for all of us to consider ourselves as a part time adolescent might be very useful, especially since it seems to be clearly true.

Adolescents require particular care for the sake of their personal development—principled, respectful, non-corrupt, non-manipulative, non-collusive, not demanding, not based on theoretical principles, and particularly non-moralistic, which must contain the means to find unknown ends, in spite of adolescents sometimes difficult or very difficult behavior and thoughts. Their fantasies and actions, which according to Freud are not all that different from grown adults, must be available to analysis.  We adults may suffer more repression than our younger brethren, but the fantasies remain. The same is true of Candidates and Members at an institute and Institutes themselves.  The same understanding and virtues must apply, as they do to adolescents.  Moralistic values, absolutely ‘correct’ wisdom can’t be, if possible, allowed.  Unfortunately, as the saying goes, we shouldn’t hold our breath.

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