Page - 120 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

120 Development of thinking forms of defense, which are connected to processes where an activity is (uncon- sciously) linked to something it suppresses and keeps affect at bay. The capacity for abstract thinking, the improved ability to remember and the broadened hori- zons of adolescent interest enable a kind of knowledge that serves as a defense mechanism – without the adolescent’s intention or knowledge. Urgent wishes are hidden behind theoretical themes, which we call “intellectualization in puberty”. This denotes a “process whereby the subject, in order to master his conflicts and emotions, attempts to couch them in a discursive form” (Laplanche and Pontalis 1988, 224). The adolescent becomes interested in psychology or philosophy, but formulates his problems in such an abstract way that they would seem to have nothing to do with him, in order to not reflect on his urgent affects and fantasies, despite an obvious jump in intellectual mastery. If boys during latency have been mostly occupied with adventures, animals and objects – real, concrete things, not products of fantasy – this might now give way to serious group discussions cen- tering on questions of principle, relationships and love, ideas about career and life, travels and professions in faraway countries, questions of worldview and religion, friendship and autonomy. Although such discussions may well be based on a thorough examination of such themes, often a discrepancy becomes evident between these principles and how they actually influence adolescent behavior. Lofty concepts of love and fairness hardly impede adolescents from inconsiderate behavior towards one another, including infidelity and emotional insensitivity. Anna Freud wrote that the adolescent’s various interests do not deter him from concentrating on the single focus of his own personality (A. Freud 1992, 125). Adolescent intellectual discussions have something of the character of daydreams in latency, without any attempt to solve real problems and tasks. Engagement with the meaning of life, revolution and death express the turbulent, warring impulses of hope and destructivity in the adolescent’s inner world. A burning plea for pat- riotism and war can be actually governed by sadistic impulses, demonstrated by the adolescent’s actual behavior. Nevertheless, this form of defense mechanism against threatening affects can be helpful as a kind of distancing. Investigation of these themes can be continued in later years (although this does not always occur), if interest does not flag. Psychoanalytic observation carries with it the danger of according more interest to the problematic and pathological side of development and neglecting the posi- tive aspects. The quickly growing cognitive capacity of formal thinking, the abil- ity to abstract, deductive logic, the development of memory fill adolescents with the desire to think – which is as much a function as is mobility. To have solved a mathematical problem elegantly, to write an essay that is both original and satisfy- ing, to make cogent arguments in a discussion – these are experiences of success, even in turbulent times. When the adolescent manages to forget his emotional turbulences and concentrate on a given task, then his self -confidence can rise. Although psychoanalysis terms the ignoring of feelings “isolation” (namely, the isolation of thoughts or behavior so that their links with other thoughts or with the person’s life are broken), this can occur to different degrees, ranging from a mas- sive blocking of the person’s involvement to a mild form of distancing that will