Page - 86 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

86 Development of feeling physical changes. It is important to recall that “the difference between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ is one of quantity and not of structure, and empirical finding con- stantly confirmed our own work” (Melanie Klein 1922, 55). She explains: “Hence children who had felt or appeared quite healthy, or at most a little nervous, can suffer quite serious breakdowns as a result of even moderate extra strains” (Ibid, 55). The causes of such pathologies are derived from early impressions and devel- opments that laid the foundations of character formation. Psychoanalysis sees these massive personality changes in puberty in the con- text of the deepest – i.e., earliest – layers of the personality. The child’s early longing is to be loved, cared for and fed, as well as to totally possess or control the source of love and food, or become that source. Giving up this strong desire is difficult, and the desire is often secretly retained, for instance through the child’s becoming sick in order to be cared for. In normal development, these wishes are countered by the opposite urge – to become an adult, to move away from the mother towards other interesting loci. In the years preceding puberty, a balance has usually been developed between the two opposing impulses. But now, hormo- nal and other physical changes effect an unconscious intensification of this con- flict. The relatively stable self -image from latency – also found in children who later have major problems in adolescence – then may appear in retrospect to have been a delicate truce between two opposing wishes and priorities, which only held because the tension between them was not yet so great. This compromise does not consist of a single identity; the girl wishes to be like her mother, yet different, or the boy wishes to become like his father and yet a completely different man. We are speaking here of a “collection of identities” (Anderson 2009, 3). Bion (1957b), influenced here by Melanie Klein, called the more primitive of the two inner functional parts of the psyche the “psychotic”, and the mature one the “non -psychotic” part – for anyone and everyone. Out of these two mechanisms, the personality is formed. How the personality is struc- tured depends on the particular balance between these two functions – sometimes dominated by integrating forces that enable an inner order oriented towards unity, but also enable the person to see other persons as complete objects who can cooperate with each other as parents do. Bion then speaks of a movement in the direction of the “depressive position”. Alternatively, a primitive, disintegrative pressure towards splitting and expulsion may dominate in an attempt to resolve conflicts. Bion speaks of a movement in the direction of the “paranoid -schizoid position”. With healthy development, a disturbance in the previously existing bal- ance is manifested by an adolescent’s major mood swings and restless behavior – yet still dominated by the integrative part of the personality. The changes in puberty can increase an adolescent’s fears to such an extent that his inner bal- ance also becomes disturbed and the psychotic part of the personality becomes dominant. Due to physical changes, adolescents are confronted with their increased strength, which can elicit euphoric or disquieting feelings of power: for males, the sense of physical beauty and strength afforded by an erection, with the capacity