Page - 119 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Development of thinking 119 Adolescents typically harbor both a great desire and aversion towards self - exploration, with its turmoil and contradictions. New cognitive capabilities can be employed either to block painful insights about oneself, the family and parents, or towards self -recognition and tolerance of one’s negative aspects. Bion formulates this dilemma in these words: The individual has to live in his own body, and his body has to put up with having a mind living in it. . . . I think it is fundamental that the person con- cerned should be able to be in good contact with himself – good contact in the sense of tolerant contact, but also in the sense of knowing just how hor- rible he thinks he is, or his feelings are, or what sort of person he is. There has to be some kind of tolerance between the two views that live together in the same body. (Bion 2005, 10) Thus, Bion would not put pressure on somebody to embody his own ideal of a good person, but instead to recognize his positive and negative components. The psyche can closely fluctuate between euphoria and joy to a depressed, reflective lassitude. Robert Musil describes this overheated state of mind: It expresses a simple spiritual fact: that the imagination works only in twi- light. . . . And there is a kind of thinking that makes us happy. It gets into you so impatiently that your knees shake; it piles up insights before you in flight and storm, believing in which will absorb the life of your soul for years to come, and – you will never know if they are true. Let’s be honest: you are suddenly transported up a mountain from which you can see your inner future with blissful breadth and certainty, like – let’s be honest, like a peri- odic madman, a manic -depressive in the early stages of mania. You don’t cry out or do anything foolish, but your thinking is unencumbered and gigantic as if with clouds, while the healthy mind fits thoughts together snugly like bricks and has the overriding need to test every single step again and again against the facts. (Musil 1990, 31ff ) Musil contends that this intuitive way of thinking makes us happy. This form of imagination functions “only at twilight”. Imagination also bears fruit for rational thought, which Musil compares to a sewing machine that sews stitch for stitch. Writers often express more flexibly what psychoanalysis attempts to describe. Freud speaks of the significance of daydreaming in adolescence as a search for the ideal self – and/or the feared self. This search for the adolescent’s self -image in the adult world entails a process of grieving for an idealized world now lost to him. Adolescence encompasses all aspects of mental and psycho -physiological development. A sudden storm of intensive drive development also requires new