Adolescent Psychoanalysis

Leading and Following

Chapter 16

Part 1

Sergio Contardi: Journal of European Psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis can be defined as a practice of listening. Freud himself defined this listening as floating or “evenly suspended,” that is, a listening aimed not at unveiling the hidden meaning of what the patient says, but rather at grasping and freeing a new signification.”

A supervisee recently presented a case. She was explaining a story told to her by an adolescent patient. She seemed to be following her patient, a 16 year old very hardened inner city girl, asking questions that clarified the material that was presented. The material, gradually expanding, became more and more sexually and violently explicit. The therapist became more and more agitated by this material, initially internally, then suddenly explained to the patient ‘that the patient should understand that the dangerous behaviors she was engaging in could have severe consequences on her—pregnancy, AIDS, death, etc.’ The session went immediately awry and an argument ensued.

The therapist’s statements abruptly changed her position from follower to leader (in this instance, angry educator). Up to this point, the material offered by the patient was being followed by the therapist and the patient was the leader. By ‘leader’ I mean the person, the patient, presenting the material. By ‘follower’ I mean the therapist who was following the patient’s material about which she is curious, seeking clarifications and NOT directing the material in any particular direction. The session now became a debate between the patient and the therapist. “I know, I know” the patient said (referring to her dangerous activities). “Then why don’t you do something about it?” said the therapist. The flow of the material had changed dramatically. Instead of the material continuing to expand, as it had been, it shifted and stopped. The patient had been leading and was now debating with the therapist, who became the ‘leader’. Both insisted that they were the leader. Both were ‘right’, according to them.

This shrinking away from the curiosity needed to elucidate the adolescent’s way of thinking, his meanings, is a great problem for many of us. So much of what many adolescents think radically deviates from standards we have all developed as we have grown and matured into adulthood. The temptation to cease ‘Following’ the oftentimes seemingly inscrutable or unacceptable associations (including but not limited to verbal free associations) and begin ‘Leading’ (teaching truths known to be the ‘truth’ by the analyst) is immense. I have intentionally titled this chapter “Leading and Following”, to call attention to these phenomena. It is my intent that the material both before and after this paragraph, will illuminate the importance I attach to these practices.

The material of the adolescents must lead us to clarify their associations. This practice is as old as psychoanalysis and one of Freud’s seminal contributions. The Basic Rule for the patient: “say whatever comes to mind, without censorship”; for the analyst: ‘without memory or desire, listen to these associations, and determine their meaning, if possible’. If free associations form a basic foundation of psychoanalysis, they are of even greater importance in the analysis of adolescents. The ‘free’ associations of adolescents are ‘freer’ than those of adults. It is not that the ‘meanings’ of associations in adult patients are fixed, patient to patient. It is that for a variety of reasons (age, experience, brain structure, social influence, etc.) the associations of most adolescents are often ‘wider’, less coherent, less ‘rational’, less arithmetic, etc. Therefore, determining the ‘meanings’ of associations of adolescents is usually more or vastly more difficult than the same determinations in adults.

If an English speaking analyst were to try to analyze a French speaking patient, the first task would be to learn to speak French. In this situation should the analyst be unable to learn French, there could be no analysis (unless the analyst spoke very loudly and much more slowly—a technique many Americans use in exactly this situation). The same situation often applies to adolescents. One must learn, on an ongoing basis, ‘Adolesentese’, comparable to the English speaking analyst having to learn French, with the caveat that French has a certain stability, while ‘Adolesentese’ doesn’t. In the latter, the meaning of words change and can be added or deleted at a moments notice. As a simple reminder, the meaning of ‘talking’ today can mean ‘hanging out’ tomorrow and ‘hooking up’ the day after. The meaning of ‘hooking up’ today can be ‘meeting’, such as at the mall. Tomorrow, ‘hooking up’ may mean having sex (the current meaning of ‘hooking up’).

From the position of the analyst, ‘Clarification’ of these associations, therefore ‘understanding’ of the adolescent, is an ongoing process, from the very beginning to the absolute end of the analysis. By ‘clarification’ I mean methods which often, but not always, take the form of ‘free’ listening and seeing and feeling, illuminated by ‘curiosity’. “Psychoanalysis can be defined as a practice of listening. Freud himself defined this listening as floating or “evenly suspended,” that is, a listening aimed not at unveiling the hidden meaning of what the patient says, but rather at grasping and freeing a new signification.” (Dr. Sergio Contardi: “Journal of European Psychoanalysis” (citation incomplete)).

In this model, ideally, ‘an association’, inspires ‘curiosity’ in the analyst leading to a necessarily incomplete ‘clarification’ in the analyst, which spawns curiosity, and curiosity expressed to the patient, inspires a new association. And so forth. All these elements, ‘association’, ‘clarification’, ‘curiosity’, and ‘expression’ are interactive processes, not objects nor facts. The sum of these processes–“Grasping and freeing a new signification”– constitutes learning.

For this process to have any particular use, the analyst must think or learn something new, usually about his patient, so that his clarifications can show the patient something new about himself, a new ‘signification’. If the analyst learns or thinks nothing new, he can grasp and free nothing. If that is the case, the analyst will only find what he is looking for, that which supports what he has previously determined to be true. That being the case, all due credit to Kant, the analyst either believes that he knows ‘the thing in itself’ of the patient, or that all patients are identical.

Many, if not most adolescents, react very badly to ‘classical’ interpretations, unless these interpretations are very firmly grounded in the material at hand, don’t interrupt the flow of the material, and are made in a fashion useful to the patient. By useful, I mean in terms of language, expression, etc., that can be ‘digested’ by the patient.

‘Adolescentese’, albeit difficult to learn, is the language of choice. Ordinary epistemological standards usually don’t apply. Insistence on adult standards and measurements of thinking, e.g., ‘rationally justified true beliefs’, is usually both impractical and foolish. ‘Adolescentese’, for example, is highly idiosyncratic and changeable and seemingly or actually irrational. My experience is that at least trying to learn this ‘language’ carries a good deal of weight with most adolescents. We usually get credit for trying. Nevertheless, obviously, we are not adolescents and pretending to be one usually often causes serious problems. For example, the question of ‘who is the patient?’ arises. There is something to be said for being an adult, behaving like one, etc. The adolescent, in the last analysis, didn’t come to see a peer, which can be done in numerous ways, but an adult who doesn’t expect them to be one.

There are a number of major benefits that flow from the use ‘Adolescentese’ communication technique. If one is asking an adolescent, using their language, if they can tell more about their thought, there is usually little cause for a debate. Everyone, or nearly everyone, adolescents included, likes to talk about what they say, their truth. Challenging their truths as opposed to trying to discern and understand them, should be left to debaters. Debating should be left to debaters. Accumulating associations, clarifying and understanding them, and communicating curiosity and understanding, is our work. Particularly with adolescents, making judgments and debating truths should be left to others.

There is another and perhaps greater advantage to this practice. The material is simply rarely artificially narrowed, or limited by theories. A ‘classic’ interpretation, no matter how close it may be to the truth, is always wrong (Kant—“thing in itself”), and breaks the continuity of the material of the session and spawns arguments, or worse, sycophants. Saying ‘always wrong’ is not a comment on the quality of the theory that forms the basis of a classic interpretation. It is, however, a comment on the fact that no interpretation can be any better than close (yet another example of the usefulness of Kant and ‘the thing in itself’). The material it purports to illuminate is, at best an ‘emanation’ from the ‘thing in itself’—the actual personality of the adolescent. That being the case, realistic modesty about ‘interpretations’ and their worth or accuracy has a great deal to be said for it.

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