Page - 28 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

28 Psychosexual development in puberty its modalities of summoning or suffering – is a sign that speaks directly to his mother” (Lebovici 2003, 254, translation McQuade). The infant’s entire body serves as a medium of communication. In romantic love as well, a couple will develop its own language, with particu- lar words and gestures assuming special meanings; facial gestures are exaggerated and tailored to each other, as if the lovers were completely synchronized. Indeed, lovers also like to move in a synchronized fashion, with to -and -fro movements symbolically enacting separation and reunification (see Person 1988). Sharp noises or a loud, angry voice can frighten a baby or a lover, making the baby cry. The inability to love – which can be traced to unsatisfying experiences or inade- quate harmony between baby and mother – brings many people to therapy. Falling in love is a different matter from achieving a lasting love relationship. Behind the ostensibly irresistible Don Juan, who boasts of 2,064 conquests, lies the inability to achieve a lasting, fulfilling relationship with its attendant psychic pain, which is then concealed behind a forced drive for new sexual activity. As soon as such people have filled their urgent need for proximity, they feel panic at being locked in. A baby’s initial love for the mother is both ecstatic and impossible, and can shift from love to hate. Falling in love, being in love, tomber amoureux, denotes various emotional states that can differ greatly. “Falling in love” implies an event outside of our control and hence a form of helplessness. For each of us, early experiences remain active and vital for our entire lives. Erik Erikson (1950) speaks of this time as a phase of primal trust or primal mis- trust. If the primitive self – Bion calls it the “psychotic self” – originally managed to experience another person in a loving relationship, then it can develop a life - affirming attitude. If the loving relationship goes unfulfilled, then the fundaments of the personality are unstable, and an adolescent can break down under his newly erupting drive development. Primal mistrust is based in unfulfilled experiences from early childhood and is manifested in various forms. One patient related that her mother often forgot her in her baby carriage: her loud cries often went unheard for a half hour, even though she occasionally cried so loudly that she lost con- sciousness. Her mother would also withdraw to the bathtub for hours on end, oblivious to the outer world. This diminished significance in her mother’s eyes caused the patient deep long -term confusion, insecurity and doubt as to whether relationships were indeed possible: in place of trust, mistrust dominated. At times in the inner world, two convictions may oppose each other. The sub- ject’s hope of being loved by somebody (mother or father as primary object) – having somebody who wants him to live – opposes the deep doubt as to whether the subject’s life is relevant for another person, or in fact absolutely irrelevant. In one adolescent’s suicide note, she wrote that “nothing matters”. She had never felt wanted by her parents and had lost all hope of having any significance for another human being. Even her analyst – who attended her funeral – could not overcome her deep distrust. For a time, this deep vulnerability can be hidden behind the arrogance of narcissistic personalities – a structure Bion dubs a “disaster” in his article “On