Page - 36 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

36 Psychosexual development in puberty subject to revert to a fixated version of the Oedipus complex, then we can infer an underlying pathological tendency (compare Britton 2014). Adolescence demands a new ordering of Oedipal patterns from early child- hood, where successful forms of mastering them can be once again employed, or unresolved conflicts can arise and be newly ordered (given favorable conditions). In the following section, we will examine particular forms of “wish revival” from early childhood. The longing for union with the primary love object The longing to be as close as possible to the mother’s body or withdraw into the protection of the womb is not experienced consciously, but manifested in various forms – for example, the immersion in loud music. Just as the baby hears its moth- er’s heartbeat at approximately 90 decibels, corresponding to the sound of a sports car, adolescents might experience loud music in a disco or in any closed room as if mutely immersed in a virtual trance. Percussion almost demands that we move to its rhythm, and this movement reminds us of being rocked in the womb. Dur- ing slow, close dancing, there is also a sensual attraction, an unaccustomed form of body contact, that reminds us of cuddling and being stroked by our parents; in intimate proximity, the dancing couple experiences this memory, as well as fear, excitement, arousal and desire – the erotic tension that urges us towards its inten- sification. Dances such as the tango or the Viennese waltz also can entail the man placing his leg between the woman’s legs. In the lyrics of hit songs, fantasies are also put into words – fantasies of becom- ing one with the love partner, along with the unavoidable fear and pain of separa- tion attendant upon these aspirations. One such song (written by Marks Simon and Gerald Marks) describes this longing to be one person, called: “All of Me”. It says: “Why not take all of me/Can’t you see I’m no good without you/Take my lips/I wanna lose them/Take my arms/I’ll never use them”. The song describes the pain of separation if she does not love him anymore, because she “took the part, that once was his heart”. And a similar theme has the title “Heaven, I’m in Heaven”. Why is the singer in heaven and how does he experience this feeling? It says: “my heart beats so that I can hardly speak/And I seem to find the happiness I seek/When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek . . . Heaven, I’m in heaven” (lyrics by Irving Berlin). The memories of this tight dancing experience is remembered all over again. Girls and adolescent boys can sit for hours remembering the words and the experience of touching the body of the beloved person during the dance. When a boy whispers these lines in the ear of a girl he is in love with dur- ing dancing, her entire body reacts to his passion. These arousing experiences become the subject of daydreams. The wish to give oneself up also has another side: “do with me what you will”, “I want to be your slave”, i.e., the pleasures of sexual dependence or addiction. This wish constitutes a portion of every infatua- tion. Freud (1905) characterized the first phase of being in love as something that