Page - 118 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Adolescents think about themselves in a very different way than do children in latency. Their new self -image is shaped by the cognitive capability to think abstractly: hypotheses are no longer developed in the sense of concrete opera- tions, but in an abstract fashion, where conclusions can be drawn. Adolescents also possess a greater capacity for memory and attention. They can understand complex relations and mutual relationships, also applying themselves to moral questions. As seen in Chapter 3, an adolescent must integrate precisely oppos- ing tendencies. The capacity for thinking abstractly – including abstracting from one’s own drives and behavior – is opposed by the adolescent seeing himself as the center of the world. The capability of posing and testing hypotheses clashes with the adolescent’s grandiosity and overestimation of his own abilities, revived from early childhood. The capability to test the consequences of assumptions is opposed by the impulse to act instead of reflecting on oneself and one’s motives. The capability to have creative thoughts and do new things without being limited by tradition and customs is opposed by the capability to carefully test the conse- quences of a hypothesis. The development of thinking and the ability to learn is based on each indi- vidual’s prior experiences. Instead of taking in mostly prepared knowledge, the adolescent is now able to independently obtain information and discuss it with his peers. Particularly in the age of the Internet, access to a wide range of information is practically unlimited; here, adolescents have a flexible, even playful approach that is especially helpful with this medium. These new cognitive capabilities can be compared to the baby’s ingesting of solid food, another developmental step. With the transition to solid food, the baby is no longer dependent on the maternal breast; it could be fed by other persons or eat by itself. Many adolescents now discover new activities, pursuing their interests, trying out their new capabilities and developing a new independence from school and family. Bion used the abbreviation K to distinguish two forms of knowledge from one another. He speaks of learning from experience as K to describe a learning from experience that becomes integrated in the personality, thus leading to enrichment and growth. Opposed to this is a purely formal, “dead” knowledge that Bion con- siders a collection of dead content, which he terms -K (Bion 1962, 89ff ). 4 Development of thinking