Page - 90 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

90 Development of feeling process of separation from the parents can seem desirable in theory, but is felt as something emotionally painful. In the maturing process of puberty, the adolescent is faced with the task of parting from his parents as primary love objects in order to find inner space for seeking a partner among his peers. At the same time, opposing currents are acti- vated: at times, the early Oedipal desires to win the parent of the opposite sex as a lover are revived. This is something like a car accelerating inexorably but with the driver’s foot also on the brake now and again. This situation reminds me of an experience I had in a bus in Havana, Cuba. The bus driver always acceler- ated before a red light, before sharply braking. The passengers, mostly standing, were thrown amongst each other, held onto each other, their bodies thrown into contact, laughing and apologizing simultaneously. Nobody seemed surprised or irritated. Thus did a routine experience of stopping for a red light become an intense group experience. Adolescents and their parents are also thrown towards and away from one another. These forces of nature become comprehensible when we understand that while massive changes are occurring not only in the adoles- cent’s inner world, deep layers of the parents’ personalities and inner worlds are also stirred up. Parents must deal with real changes in living with their growing children: sexual maturity and physical changes demonstrate their daughter’s or son’s awakening sexuality and remind them of their own aging process. One gen- eration will take over for the previous one, i.e., the younger generation pushes to center stage and attempts to push back the older generation. The sexual maturity of the parents’ children often coincides with a wane in sexual potency and the end of child -bearing in menopause. The adolescents have something that the parents can envy. Winnicott (1984, 203) writes of adolescents’ inexhaustible but precious potential as eliciting adult envy. On a deeper, often unconscious level, fears, hopes and experiences from the parents’ own adolescence arise, as well as the basic pat- terns of their own experiences of separation. All experiential patterns of separa- tion, beginning with birth, weaning, loss of Oedipal illusions (the boy as mother’s lover, the girl as father’s princess), become virulent. It is very difficult to deal with all of these unexpected feelings now emerging, to perceive them, reflect on them and accept them as a part of oneself. It is easier to not perceive them in oneself but instead criticize them in one’s son or daughter. This tendency to find the problems in others and not in oneself can also be found among adolescents. An important characteristic of adolescence is the tendency to not reflect but instead project one’s feelings onto others, acting instead of reflecting. Adolescents unconsciously want to elicit in their parents the feelings they prefer not to see in themselves. Admiration for the parents turns to its opposite, with the parents described in unflattering terms and rendered ridiculous. Adolescents often bla- tantly display their sexual attractiveness in order to provoke their parents’ envy. This means that the parents must bear a double burden: as they are bombarded by their adolescent child’s projections, they simultaneously must deal with their own unconscious envy. Bion compared the image of bearing projections with the soldier’s experience at the front in World War I: remaining capable of thinking