Page - 135 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

The search for the self – identity 135 doesn’t have any worries. I know I’m writing a little stupidly, but when I’m sad I write in this overblown way. Oh well. Now I gave Phillipp a few Play- mobile Maxerls to play with. Now I feel quite well again. Anyway, I don’t have to cry anymore. I’ll write again tomorrow . . .! Oh yeah, the skiing course was amazingly fun. I like Daniel . . . I mean, I think he’s nice. He said I have the most beautiful figure in the whole skiing course! I like that, but it hasn’t made me conceited. I also wanted to say: I passed math! I’m going to get a 2 or 3 on the assignment. Super! So: good- night, goodnight, sleep well! Lari T., 13 years old (Lari, quoted in Erhard 1998, 51ff; translation McQuade) 5.4 Discussion The parents’ divorce often coincides with a son or daughter’s puberty. I have already described how parents come into unconscious competition with their children and thus sometimes select a new partner (often the daughter’s age). Not only is the ado- lescent searching for a partner, but the parents – in unconscious competition – may find a new partner more quickly than their children do. For the adolescent, their parents’ separation constitutes an additional burden. Unconsciously, every child – even at the age of 13 or 14 – feels he is at fault for the separation, that he has been too naughty, too difficult, too much of a burden. In fantasy, he thinks his Oedipal desires toward the parent of the opposite sex has driven them away. Paradoxically, it becomes more difficult for an adolescent to distance himself from his parents when he lives alone with one of them, but also when a new partner appears on the scene. From Lari’s diary entry, one can feel how disconsolate her mother is. As she remarks, when her parents get a divorce, she will have no family anymore. She is ashamed to talk about it with her friends, but she can confide her feelings to her patient and absolutely trustworthy diary. She is afraid to become an outsider. Lari can comfort herself by listening to “West Side Story”, which features adolescent groups and early love. Afterwards she remembers that she is not allowed to go away with her father. In self -reflection, she calls her writing “overblown” – and then manages to stop crying. Also comforting is her memory of Daniel’s compli- ment, and her success at math serves to further stabilize her emotionally. Her diary is a loving friend, one she can confide her problems and feelings to. She wishes her diary good night and a good sleep. She also identifies with her diary as her own conversational partner. Her ability to cope with her problems and reflect on them indicates a relatively stable inner world with good inner parental images. Several years later, at the age of 17, Lari recounts her successes at school, but then her scholastic achievement falls back drastically – presumably due to her parents’ divorce. She tells her diary how lonely she feels: And now I’m bored, since there is nobody who wants to do something with me, I have neither a friend nor a boyfriend, like in “old times”. Why don’t I