Page - 38 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

38 Psychosexual development in puberty love object (since Clark Gable, as Rhett Butler, actually existed). Paradoxically, the girl retains enough distance to have no doubt she will fall in love with him and adore him. For the “father”, i.e., Rhett Butler, she is the better, more under- standing wife. Her admiration for the beautiful mother is mixed with competition and jealousy. Like childhood games, daydreams constitute a “transitional space” (Winnicott 1969). They contain elements from the past, have their trigger in the present and include the future. Usually, fantasies stop at kissing; seldom is a baby fantasized. For male adolescents, daydreams consist of dangerous situations that they mas- ter and for which they are then rewarded. Adolescents have given up their child- hood games and must therefore renounce a familiar pleasure. As compensation, the male adolescent builds castles in the air for the rest of his life. At the same time, he must conceal these fantasies, since he finds them childish and is ashamed. Such daydreams are adapted to the daydreamer’s life situation, interlinking ele- ments from the past, present and future: we must not suppose that the products of this imaginative activity – the vari- ous phantasies, castles in the air and daydreams – are stereotyped or unalter- able. . . . Mental work is linked to some current impression, some provoking occasion in the present which has been able to arouse one of the subject’s major wishes. From there it harks back to a memory of an earlier experience (usually an infantile one) in which this wish was fulfilled; and it now creates a situation relating to the future which represents a fulfillment of the wish . . . and thus past present and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through them. (Freud 1908a, 147) This psychic work is linked to some actual event, taking up childhood memories in order to fulfill future wishes. A poor student imagines the triumph of becoming the best student. A girl imagines herself to be the most beautiful at a party, to pass her exam with honors or to be the fastest runner. Monika relates that she and her sister withdrew to an “after -lunch rest” on Sundays. They darkened their shared room, put on one of their favorite records and daydreamed in bed. Each of them sank into her own fantasy world, but they enjoyed doing this together – although they never discussed their fantasies. In Monika’s daydream, there was a dangerous situation: soldiers approached her aggressively and erotically, threatening to rape her. Then, their superior appeared, saving her from their clutches and restoring her to her parents. He fell in love with her at first sight, and she returned his love. Carefully, he touched her arm and kissed her. Then Monika broke off the dream. Monika’s fear of rape presumably has its roots in the fantasized violent sexual union of her parents, although at the same time she is saved and protected by a paternal figure; the soldiers would seem to represent the sexual urges she would