Page - 53 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Psychosexual development in puberty 53 brains become diseased or broken: Giles, a collector for charities, discovers his brain is leaking out the back of his head, so he stuffs it back in and uses a hat to hold it in place. Indeed, virtually every punishment imagined in a nightmare is actively depicted in this film. These macabre scenes are similar to the “bizarre objects” Wilfred Bion described from the fantasies of psychotic patients – objects the patients view not as products of their fantasies but as truly existing and truly persecuting them. Bion describes the difference between psychotic and non -psychotic personalities as such: 1) the preponderance of the destructive impulses are so strong that even loving impulses are affected and become sadistic; 2) hatred of reality as extended to all aspects of the psyche; 3) derived from these two points, the psychotic has an unremitting dread of imminent annihilation and fear of direct destruction; and 4) only a thin, immature relationship to other people can be established, since the psychotic’s entire energy is focused on the conflicts between destructivity and sadism, incapable of final resolution (Bion 1956, 36). In the film Bad Taste, all of these dimensions of the psychotic personality are embodied by the aliens, whereas the government agents represent the non - -psychotic parts of the personality. The film’s leitmotif is the wish to kill and annihilate all human beings, spiced with cannibalistic desires: as in Freud’s book Totem and Taboo (1912–13), the human beings’ strength accrues to the aliens when they eat their brains. There is no reality, and the alien dominates the village. Between the aliens, there is no emotional connection; the plot swerves between destruction and sadism, with the aliens finally annihilated. In puberty, all early and primitive feelings become reawakened and accordingly threaten the ability to think. Through creative artistic depiction, they can be tamed and integrated, often with the help of the viewer’s emotional processes. In the following section, I describe two therapies with adolescents where it was possible to work through Elfi’s early denial of sexuality and James’ violent fan- tasies, opening psychic space for the development of their sexual wishes. In this sense, we can consider adolescence to be a second chance. 2.6 Adolescents in therapy Particularities of adolescent therapy Therapeutic work with adolescents demands a special understanding of this psy- chic transitional phase. The clinical setting is simple and stable; the therapy ses- sions always take place in the same room at a pre -arranged time. Some of the same formal elements from child therapy are also offered: paper and magic mark- ers for drawing, perhaps also a pair of scissors, glue and a ruler. However, focus is on the spoken word. In child analysis, the initial consultation is usually with the parents (without the child); with adolescents, this depends on the individual case. Sometimes, adoles- cents have contacted the therapist or a clinic, in which case they are present at the