Adolescent Psychoanalysis

The Deconstruction and Construction of Adolescents and Their Analysts

Chapter 13

Addendum

(The following is a partial reprint of an early paragraph of this chapter, (part 1) re-formulated to address the mental health, education, ongoing development of Adolescents as well as Psycho-analytic Candidates, Senior Analysts, and Psycho-analytic Institutes. The successful analysis of adolescents requires skills that are very similar to what should be the skills we bring to each other in our development as analysts.

The majority of us are Type A analysts, and therefore, but for rare exceptions, were Type A Candidates.  Our adolescent patients are very often Type B. They often reach quick, rapidly changing solutions, are saturated with certainty, often bolstered by idealism and energy and usually clearly aligned against those who think fundamentally differently from they.

Some candidates and analysts resemble adolescents.  Only some. For us to not have the patience to tolerate and nurture the thoughts and hopes of these groups, be they quick, having thoughts that are not well thought out, or omnipotently certain, means that there will be no development. For those of us who hope for the usefulness and preservation of Psycho-analysis, in my case particularly for adolescents, the absence of such tolerance is a recipe for disaster.

Most of us Analysts’, Candidates’, and Institutes’ ‘hopes’ are more mature, more grounded than adolescents and more attached to what we call reality.  Or so we think. A key issue, however, is that often our maturity and our ‘understanding’ of reality functions not as an asset, but as an anchor chain.  Our views of reality very often contradict, sometimes virtually completely, the ‘realities’ of adolescents.  Our views applied to adolescents cause our views to be anchor chains not assets.

The set of Adolescents, Psycho-analytic Candidates, Analysts, and Psycho-Analytic Institutes, surprisingly, is a logical set. Ideally, the atmosphere in which this set should reside, should resemble as closely as possible that which is suited to a Type B adolescent. The members of this set would seek a fresh, full of life, experimenting, questioning, doubting, etc., environment, in the midst of appropriate structure.  Adolescents, as part of this set, are both living and embarking on a new and what should be a formative and fulfilling epoch in their life. The others of this set should settle for nothing less for themselves.

In talking to a colleague the other day, he listed a group of Los Angeles and Southern Psycho-analytic Institute graduates, who were well known to him, who had simply disappeared or who moved on elsewhere.  He had little or no idea where the ‘where’ was. The reasons for their departure are undoubtedly as many as there are individuals who left.  Most of them have nothing to do with any of the numerous fledgling analytic ‘Institutes’ now in Los Angeles which have replaced what used to be the two major Institutes in Los Angeles. I, like some of the ‘disappeared’ colleagues, have had no attachment, formal or informal, to any Los Angeles Institute for many years. 

The Los Angeles and Southern California Institutes no longer exist as they were, from my point of view, a tragic development.  The fighting over who bore the ultimate truth, was obviously a major cause of their demise.  Economics and lack of interest of potential candidates undoubtedly contributed as well. Unlike the Asian girl written about above, we never escaped our brand of A track, or modified it.  We ‘never looked down’.

Bearing in mind that this book is about the analysis of adolescents, this attitude, not looking down, is exactly what makes the analysis of adolescents so difficult.  If one approaches an adolescent with such an attitude, ‘looking up‘, failure is virtually guaranteed. 

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