Page - 23 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Psychosexual development in puberty 23 elements – Bion (1962) calls them “beta elements” – can she return them to the baby in a modified form, by putting them into words. The result of this transfor- mational process from primitive sensation (beta elements) into descriptive words is called by Bion “alpha elements”. This early form of communication is termed the Model of Container and Contained, where the mother supplies a “container” for the primitive, archaic fears which the baby has projected into her. The moth- er’s ability to intuit what her baby fears is called by Bion “reverie” – a dreamy state of intuition and empathy. In situations of hunger, thirst, sickness and fatigue, the baby feels it is surrounded and attacked by hostile powers both inside and outside its body. As long as it cannot differentiate between inside and outside, it quickly feels threatened. The child requires solace and support from its parents in order to bear these fluctuations between happiness and desperation, security and persecution, patience and frustration. Phases of desperation, rage and powerless- ness exist alongside moments of peace, solace and love (Lebovici 2003). In Young Child and Their Parents, I wrote: An infant’s initial experiences are somatic in character. Psychoanalysis has helped us understand that the first love between baby and mother constitutes a prerequisite for romantic love between man and woman later in life. In adult love, we recollect the psychic experience of baby -mother or baby -father love. The first love between mother and baby forms the foundation for an adult’s later capacity to love; it is impossible to love without having experienced being loved. An unloved baby will find it difficult – although not impossible – to fall in love as an adult, and such a love is likely to be painful, characterized by a lack of satisfying unity between two lovers. (Diem -Wille 2014, 73) The special, unique relationship pattern in this mother -baby dyad, together with the father who is meaningful for them both, helps set a pattern of connectedness in the baby’s inner world – a pattern that constitutes the basis for later romantic love relationships. From the pleasurable satisfaction experienced in nursing, where the baby ingests not only milk, but also love and security, the baby must proceed to the disappointment represented by weaning. The ability to ingest solid food brings increased independence from the mother and relegates the more intense oral sat- isfaction (according to Freud, the “first erogenous zone”) through breast -feeding. Now, through the adolescent’s sexual urges, these early wishes for oral satisfac- tion arise once again: the first kiss conveys memories of early feelings of pleas- ure and desire, vibrating through the adolescent’s entire body. These feelings are hardly limited to the oral region, but overtake our entire bodies and evoke the stimulation and satisfaction of our time as babies. However, we are incapable of directly connecting to these early desires, since they were already converted to their opposite during the process of weaning. In place of the longing for oral grati- fication, the disgust of bodily contact takes an upper hand: saliva at first seems