Page - 116 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

116 Development of feeling Mothers closely bound to their sons tend to warn them of “dangerous” girls, thus increasing their fears. Only when the son has lived at home too long and takes no initiative towards starting a relationship does the mother realize how she has stood in his way. Parents are often advised: to help adolescents be patient with their bodies that are altering so extremely, with the attendant drives and wishes that they cannot yet accept and deal with realistically – so that those drives explode either in the form of violence or out of a feeling of helplessness compared to what adolescents would like to do in fantasy but cannot yet achieve in reality. (Dolto and Dolto -Tolitch 1992, 158, translation McQuade) This sounds simple enough, but the opposite is true. The transformation of their child’s body into an adolescent one robs parents of their intimacy with the familiar childish body that used to cuddle with theirs – with the child often taking the ini- tiative. Suddenly this body becomes unfamiliar, it smells different, its proportions and muscle structure are altered, evoking other associations. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it is remarkable how often parents comment negatively on the changes in their adolescent children’s bodies, bodies which formerly seemed to virtually “belong” to the parents. A patient I will call Fritzi told me that her father looked at her face and then opined: “Soon your nose will grow into your chin.” Although they both laughed, she was deeply insulted. When she and her brother cannot carry heavy construc- tion materials at home as easily as their father, he mocks them as “weaklings”. The mother comments on a grease spot on Fritzi’s pants, covering her newly cur- vaceous legs: “Your fat is already dripping out” (although she actually was on the slim side). How can we understand what makes these parents mock their daughter so cru- elly and dismissively? In fact, this father is very strongly in favor of all three chil- dren graduating from the academic high school; Fritzi is the only one to study at university, and he supports this. The father had a difficult and limiting childhood, not only financially but also emotionally. Nobody seemed to care how he was doing. On the one hand, he wishes to make a better life possible for his daughter, but on the other hand he passes down to her what he has experienced – envy, denigration and pure scorn. Seemingly, he can only praise other people’s children, while denigrating his own. In parents of adolescents, unconscious conflicts with their own parents are reactivated. Achieving independence from single mothers or fathers is particularly diffi- cult, as well as from parents living in a marriage devoid of sexual or emotional closeness, where one parent is completely dependent emotionally on their child. In patchwork families, it is particularly difficult for adolescents to deal with par- ents and stepparents alike, since loyalty – often conflicted – exists to both parties. Elfi, whose peer group and analyst encouraged her to defend herself against her