Page - 110 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

110 Development of feeling activities until the age of 25 that he had no relationship with a young woman. He describes the first time he fell in love, at the age of 23: I went a little bit mad. And the cause of this madness, which began to disrupt my work, my sleep, my Footlights life, indeed every corner of my daily rou- tine, was this: I fell in love. When I say I fell in love, I didn’t actually have much to do with it. I simply became engulfed in a storm of emotions, so unfamiliar, bewildering and over- whelming, that I basically came apart. Inside, anyway . . . I had no idea what this “falling in love” business might actually feel like . . . to one of the women who attended the law lectures. . . . I was developing obsessional romantic thoughts, even though she had an attractive boyfriend with whom she was obviously very involved. . . . I did not attempt to make them known, but you have to remember that the middle -class culture I inhabited found any public suggestions of romantic attraction problematic. And as for hints of anything more physical, these would have been viewed as a vulgar lapse. In the society in which I had grown up, the most trivial remark or moment of bodily contact could be construed as embarrassingly sexual: touching became foreplay, and a cheeky remark an invitation to risk pregnancy, while everyone sensed that the words “I love you” landed you at the altar. . . . I found myself actually unwilling to put my foot, however gently, on the first step of the romantic process; I was fearful that I would embarrass the object of my affection. . . . This . . . concern not to offend or distress was, I’m sure, the camouflage that my unconscious employed to hide from myself my deep fear of rejection. (Cleese 2014, 162ff ) Cleese supplies a number of details concerning his extremely difficult relation- ship to his mother, who was unable to connect to him emotionally because she was occupied solely with herself and her feelings of depression. Cleese’s desperate attempt to defend himself against her fantasies and death wishes has been discussed in his autobiography. It is thus not surprising that he felt deeply rejected and unworthy of love. In his book, he asserts that no reason- able human being would want to come close to him. Certainly, the puritan sexual ideas of the English middle class play an important role here, but I would like to emphasize the intra -psychic dimension. Achieving emotional independence from a mother with whom a loving, secure relationship existed is far easier than doing so from one with whom the relationship was fraught with conflict. In the first case, the original needs of the small and older child have already been satisfied, so to speak, and the turning to a romantic relation- ship is thus possible. If the first love relationship is basically unsatisfying or conflict -ridden, the child is trapped in a love -hate relationship out of which he can free himself only with difficulty. Children who have been neglected or beaten are peculiarly dependent upon their parents. This is true of Cleese, who was in love but unable to give his adored fellow student a sign that he would like to become closer to her.