Page - 37 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Psychosexual development in puberty 37 transcends or transgresses normality. In fantasies, the reliving of an infant’s total dependency on its mother can also signify the core of a masochistic or sadistic exercise of power – a common theme in masturbation fantasies. For adolescents, music is a means for expressing their wishes and longing to dissolve the borders of the self, creating a floating feeling in the listener. Music can serve as a sanctuary when an adolescent feels lonely and lost, withdrawing and listening to loud music. Not only can the adolescent lose himself in music, but it also constitutes a background for daydreams. The nostalgic dimension of music becomes clear when teenagers listen to children’s songs in the last hours of an all - night party, with grief over the passing of childhood hovering over their nostalgic enjoyment of the old songs. 2.3 Daydreams with Oedipal themes When we say “daydreams”, we mean fantasies and imaginings – in the waking state – where normal strictures of reality are excluded. The adolescent imagines erotic or ambitious desires and sees them fulfilled in the daydream. Here, attention to the outside world is cut off; all the scenes in the daydream are short, pleasura- ble, expectant, recurring fantasies that follow the daydreamer’s imaginings. Erotic scenes are often recalled again and again, like a film or record put on “repeat”. As people grow up, then, they cease to play . . . (build) castles in the air and create what are called daydreams. . . . The adult . . . is ashamed of his phan- tasies and hides them from other people. He cherishes his phantasies as his most intimate possessions, and as a rule he would rather confess his misdeeds than tell anyone his phantasies. (Freud 1908b, 144) In the street, we can recognize a daydreamer by his absent -minded smile or her talking to herself. Satisfying “castles in the air” are constructed. A love relation- ship is often fantasized with celebrities, singers, actors or pop stars, where the celebrity chooses the fantasizing girl – immature as she is – to be his lover. After seeing the movie Gone With the Wind (1939), one 14 -year -old girl fanta- sized for weeks of being kissed by Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) as he kissed Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) in an elegant recline. Later she dared to fantasize that Rhett Butler had invited her to Hollywood, taking her passionately into his arms at the airport. As he had to Scarlett, he whispered in her ear: “You should be kissed and kissed often, and by someone who knows how”. She would reconcile her misunderstandings with him and have his baby, since the first child died during a riding accident. She would be a better, more understanding wife than the self- centered, vain Scarlett. Here, the girl’s Oedipal wish seems clear, since she puts herself in the mother figure’s place, placing her idol in the position of her parent of the opposite sex. This idol constitutes a transitional figure between a real and a purely fantasized