Adolescent Psychoanalysis

The Deconstruction and Construction of Adolescents and Their Analysts

Chapter 13

Part 3

There is yet another crucial issue that must be recognized and addressed.  This issue goes as follows: B analyst, of which I am one, has to be able to ‘switch’ and function as an A analyst, an analyst who can deal appropriately with A material.  By A material I mean material with which many of us are familiar, especially in our work with adult patients. Specifically, adults often bring material specifically lending itself for analysis, such as dreams, specific conflicts and neuroses, depression, anxiety, etc.

One of the great benefits of having created a working, positive relationship with a difficult B adolescent, who usually operates in a B fashion, is that when they ‘switch’, B adolescent, often consciously or unconsciously, and usually abruptly, is working with A material.  By A material, I mean material which is not based on Adolescent/Analyst BB relationship formation, although strongly supported by that relation, but on actual symptoms, such as pain, anxiety, guilt, obsession, depression, etc.

An example is this: a 15 yo extremely B girl, who both required a great deal of trust building and relationship formation. Much of the time she liked to joke, mock, laugh at both herself and me, her parents, her teachers, friends, etc.  She had little or no interest in boys, partially because she reportedly had been raped not long before her analysis began and for other reasons. This joking was not malicious in this girl’s instance, but bore a great deal of humor—characterological, not neurotic.  She had a very appealing and pithy sense of humor.

For the moment, I am ignoring Freud’s admonition, ‘behind every joke ……’ by not being concerned with the meaning behind the joke.  ‘Behind’ means what the joke ‘means’ or ‘represents’ psychologically. Conceptually this means to ‘participate’ in the joke—-to take the joke for what it is, at face value and to talk of the joke material presented by the patient, concretely.  For example, pretend a patient said to me, “Why did the moron tip toe pass the medicine cabinet?”  Taking the riddle for what it is, I might respond laughingly and jokingly, “To not wake up the sleeping pills. What a stupid joke.  I’ve heard it a thousand times and each time I’ve heard it, it seemed stupid. Try to do better next time. Maybe you just think I’m moronically stupid?”

In this example, this lead to participation in her joking. On more than one occasion, she would joke about the stupidity of her mother, particularly if there was a disagreement between them.  Her mother, based on previous material presented by the patient, was not ‘stupid’, whatever ‘stupid’ may mean.  One could discuss this material as we usually do with adults, and try to determine why she ‘hated’ her mother so that we could interpret that meaning to her.

In most circumstances, with adolescents, this is exactly the wrong thing to do. The ‘meaning’ to the adolescent is that her mother is stupid.  As with the ‘joke’, the ‘thing in itself’ of her ‘stupid mother’ is the subject. However, in this instance, she and I investigated the qualities of her mother as provided by the patient, that ‘showed’ mother to be stupid.  The level of that ‘asshole’ mother’s ‘stupidity’ expanded and expanded during that session, helped along by both her and me.

(Collusion was not the basis of this expansion.  As we all know, collusion ends analysis, on the spot, and starts another process, the name of which I don’t know.   At a minimum I would have aligned myself with the daughter against the mother, placing my weight on the side of the daughter and ending her analysis)

The actual interaction in this example and many others was much more like improvisational theater than what we could call traditional psychoanalysis.  The usual goals in improvisational theater are: 1) never disagree and 2) to expand whatever was just said.  For example, if one actor asserted that the President was really horrible, the improvisational theater partner response might be, “yes, and stupid as well”. The response from the original actor might then be, “you’ve got that right.  I don’t think ‘stupid’ adequately describes him.  Worse than stupid.”  And so forth. Anyone who has devoted much time to arguing with an adolescent in treatment about much of anything will understand.

If you’ve done a good job, at some point the patient will bow out of the ‘improvisation’.

“Well, she’s really not that stupid.  You’re exaggerating. We (mother and her) just disagree sometimes.” She said.
(The growing ‘exaggeration’ has passed beyond the adolescent’s point of credulity.) Where we had been united, we were suddenly split. At that point she had aligned herself with her mother and against me.   The pair (mother and daughter) have now become the analyst, and me the misguided, defensive patient, a role which I find both entertaining, and extremely useful in building a constructive relationship.

At this point I reacted to her, not with great seriousness, but by joking, which she really enjoys.
“Now you’ve got me confused.  First you said that she was stupid, now it was only because of a disagreement and now I am exaggerating.  This seems to me to be unfair.  I may be slow, but not that slow.” I responded.

“If I hear you say you’re slow one more time I’m going to throw something at you,” she said laughing.

“Now this is really getting extreme.  First slow, misunderstanding and now a target! What will you throw?” I asked.

“I think you’re twisting things like you usually do.  You need help,” she said laughing.

“I think I’m beyond help.  You’ve said so yourself.  Although I have one asset—twisting things”. I said.

“Yeah.  Now you’ll probably say you think I’m stupid. Go fuck yourself,” she laughed.

“Things are really getting bad now.  You say I call you stupid, you say I’m a target, twist things and now I’m supposed to go fuck myself—however that is done.  All this because you said you’re mother is stupid.” I said.

“Alright, alright, I give.  But I’ll get you someday when you least expect it. You remember things too well.  What you need is some amnesia and a lot less education,” she said.

With this same patient, there were sessions where the essence of the material would change dramatically. For example, this patient came to one session as follows: humor was absent, seriousness was the mood, topics much more dramatic, much crying, anguish, etc. In this instance the material was about her parents, and most particularly her mother. She was anguished that her divorced parents hated each other so much that it made it impossible for her to deal with either one of them. That they were so immature caused great anger in her. How was she supposed to live her life normally

if she really had no real parents?

She told me this dream:

A little girl was walking down a path that she loved and encountered two people, a man and a woman lying on a blanket and kissing each other, openly, in the field that she loved on the right of the road. The little girl became extremely angry and started throwing rocks at the couple, causing them to run away.

Her associations were as follows: She didn’t think she was the girl with the black hair since she had dyed her hair black. The girl in the dream’s hair was blond, although the patient allowed as how she wished that her hair was blond. She didn’t recognize who the little girl was, she said. The path reminded her of a path she had often followed at a park near her mother’s home. She couldn’t recognize the couple although, she added, that her parents often walked along the same path. She was very angry at the couple but didn’t know why. Earlier that day, she said, she was at the mall and hates to see couples walking hand and hand. She said it looked phony. They made her sick, she said. She said that she never threw rocks at anything but trees. She couldn’t imagine herself throwing stones at people and this little girl threw rocks at the couple, who ran off in two directions. She said the stones came very near the woman. She said that the little girl ran off as well, in a different direction, scarred, crying and terrified at what she had done. The patient also said she couldn’t understand the little girl being so upset since she hadn’t hit anyone.

I interpreted that the little girl probably was her and even though she wished her parents would get along so she could talk with them, in this dream at least, she didn’t want to be able to talk with them, but wanted to split them up, perhaps killing her mother. But she felt very guilty about that, in spite of the many times she joked about her.

She reacted to this interpretation with anger at me and at her mother. Yeah, she said, she had often wished her mother dead since she liked her father much more and mother kept him from her, but hadn’t ever told anybody about it. And, she added, that that I reminded her of her father even though she was throwing rocks at him/me, she supposedly wanting to be close to her father/me.