Page - 12 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

12 The body ego K: When a boy comes my way, I glance at him quickly, then I look again and think about whether I could have something with him, whether I’d like to get to know him. I: How does he register this? K: Sometimes they look at me – because I look at them? Maybe so. It’s a reflex – it sounds a little like I’m a girlie. I look quickly, only five seconds, and then look away. If I’m together with a girlfriend, we talk about it. It just happens, I can’t help it. I’m like an animal looking for a mate. (She laughs.) I: And how do you know when a boy likes you? K: When he looks at me, when he stops to look at me, then I think he must like me. Discussion Katharina can describe her behavior with a certain self -irony – something that sur- prises even her. Her behavior is unplanned: it simply happens – as with a female animal hunting for a male. Although the idea of sexual union seems far away, she enjoys putting her attractiveness to the test. Her self -perception is shrewd as she gives boys a swift glance, then immediately looks away. Complex studies of girls’ and boys’ non -verbal behavior in a disco have come to similar conclusions as Katharina: girls were found to initiate the first eye contact much more often than boys, only to yield the initiative for beginning a conversation to the boy. Katharina’s conversations with her girlfriend help to exchange criteria for what is considered attractive. In this time of inner conflict, the adolescent’s presentation of her body can be contradictory for various places and situations. One patient reported that she tended to exhibit her body provocatively at discos or at school, but shamefully hid it at home. Indeed, she described her exhibitionism in a playful, proud way, and her shame in a shameful, small voice, in fragmented phrases. Now an excerpt from one of my analytic sessions with a 30 -year -old patient I will call Fritzi. In the previous session, she had described the great tension and lack of tenderness she experienced as a child and how cruelly her older brother treated her and her younger brother. She began the session with these words: P: Nothing fits in my body. Nothing is built right, the different parts don’t fit together. Especially down there. A: You’re quite vague about this. P: My boyfriend – I was in love with him this summer – judges every part of my body: this is good, that isn’t so good, he says: your back is nice, your (incomprehensible). A: You want to see whether I am like your boyfriend, you want to make me judge every part of your body and every sentence you say. Or whether I can see that