Page - 20 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Eating is the second most important thing in life. —Honoré de Balzac Psychosexual development in adolescence has a special significance, since now child sexuality develops into its conclusive form. A “re -formation” occurs, caus- ing Freud to speak of a “double time frame of drive development”. During this phase, three tasks must be mastered: 1) to once again work through infantile sex- ual urges, integrating tender impulses with sensual impulses; 2) to choose a love object, i.e., the person to which these impulses are directed; and 3) to develop a stable sexual identity. Melanie Klein emphasizes the significance of the adolescent crisis for the growth of personality and development of the adolescent’s character. The psycho- sexual reformation affects all layers of the personality, going back to the baby’s early feelings of helplessness/solace and including the passionate Oedipal long- ings and rivalries that were put on the back burner during latency. Before we turn to psychosexual development in puberty, we will examine the extended con- cept of sexuality in Freud, the concept of bisexuality and the phenomenon of ambivalence. The extension of the close concept of sexuality to psychosexuality can be under- stood as an expression of Freud’s deep -lying interpretation of love, eros, tender- ness and the body, which he linked to desire and passion. Here, sexual aspects of seemingly asexual behavior and phenomena are described in a systematic form (see Niztschke 1976, 362). Through this extension of the concept of sexuality, the border between pathological and “normal” sexuality becomes relativized, since “normal” and “abnormal” manifestations of sexual drives can only be understood in conjunction with each other. As Freud propounds in his “Introductory Lectures on Psycho -Analysis” (1916–17), there are only quantitative, not originally quali- tative factors characterizing psychic health or illness – including in the sexual realm. Both for adolescents and for parents, it helps to be aware of this flexible border when attempting to understand adolescent behavior as a developmental phase of sexual experimentation. 2 Psychosexual development in puberty