Page - 101 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Development of feeling 101 Everyone has these thoughts about death. Everyone is afraid of dying. What happens afterwards? A light comes – a white light. I ask everyone if they’re afraid of death. When you’re born, it’s a movement forward towards death. Discussion Thoughts of death, the fear or longing for death are common in adolescence. Psy- choanalysis understands this fascination with death as the expression of uncon- scious destructive and murderous wishes linked to fears of separation, as well as the fear of being excluded and abandoned. When one adolescent comes close to another, they experience a wide spectrum of attraction, exclusion, limitation and the wish for closeness and security. The group often assumes the containing function of maternal or paternal protection. Therefore, it is very threatening to be excluded by the peer group. Withdrawal or refusal to engage in close relationships constitutes a form of self -protection. Withdrawal and solitude serve the inner need to turn inwards. Larson and Rich- ards (1994; Larson et al. 1982 in: Arnett and Hughes 2012, 116) found that 25% of adolescents say they need more time alone, preferably in their room with the door closed; after feeling weak, lonely and sad, their mood actually improves in solitude. Larson and Richards call this self -reflection and “mood management”. Adolescents listen to music, look at themselves in the mirror, brood and fantasize. When their dejection is over, they feel relieved and ready to master the joys and sufferings of everyday life. Adolescents who have this capacity to reorder them- selves in solitude and develop confidence also have access to a good inner mater- nal object. This means they have internalized a loving mother or caring parents and can think of themselves the way they believe parents think of them. This is also how Lucy describes her withdrawal into the solitude of her room. Winnicott (1963) understood the “capacity to be alone” as an important step in development, one which becomes possible when the child perceives herself as a person separate from her mother, and yet still affectionately bound to her. “I am alone” is a development from “I am”. Dependent on the infant’s aware- ness of the continued existence of a reliable other whose reliability makes it possible for the infant to be alone and to enjoy being alone, for a limited period. In this way I am trying to justify the paradox that the capacity to be alone is based on the experience of being alone in the presence of someone, and that without a sufficiency of this experience the capacity to be alone can- not develop. (Winnicott 1963, 32) This is opposed to the feeling of loneliness, which is associated with an inner con- viction that one does not belong – and can sometimes be particularly pronounced while the adolescent is among his peers.