Page - 146 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

146 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits stimulate the parents’ help and care. If the parents respond by taking the behavior seriously, it might remain an isolated incident. Adolescents have always played pranks in order to demonstrate strength, mas- culinity, intelligence or bravery. In his book Symbolic Wounds, Bruno Bettelheim pointed out that the unconscious root of many masculine rituals lies in imitating female menstruation (1962). For male adolescents, these rituals of transition to adult status can include hunting and mastering threatening situations alone or in the peer group. Only when the male adolescent proves himself at mastering these tasks is entry to the world of masculine adulthood granted. In Western society, groups of male adolescents may voluntarily undergo exceedingly dangerous tests of bravery, some of them ending in death. These vol- untary con/tests are not set or defined by the society at large but developed by the adolescent groups themselves, more or less in opposition to societal norms – for instance, climbing over train tracks or on top of train wagons in the vicinity of an electrical tower. In the famous cult film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Jim (James Dean) is required to pass such a test of courage by the leader of his group, Buzz. In the so -called chicken run, Buzz and Jim race towards the edge of a cliff in their cars: the first one to jump out of his car is the “chicken”. Jim jumps out shortly before the cliff, but Buzz gets the arm of his jacket stuck on the doorknob and goes over the cliff with his car. One of the film’s themes is “affluent neglect”. Jim comes from a wealthy fam- ily where, however, neither mother nor father has really taken care of their lonely, lost son. This film has convincingly shown a large public the adolescent loneliness and anguish behind such dangerous deeds and tests of courage – a psychological perspective in place of the usual blame. From literature and life, we know that earlier tolerance for “pranks” was much higher. In a lecture, the president of the Viennese Juvenile Court explained how many deeds now deemed criminal were earlier considered mere pranks and even admired. In his autobiography My Doctor’s Novel. A Report from Life, Werner Vogt, a founding member of the political -professional group Critical Medicine in Austria and a doctor active in social causes, describes the common syndrome of “passing the time by playing a prank on someone” (Vogt 2013, 31). This was also a widespread phenomenon among adult men: hiding a neighbor’s bicycle, hanging up part of a fishing rod on the laundry line or building a barricade behind a curve in the street – in Vogt’s description, the butcher’s car could hardly brake in time and landed in a field, with his boxes flying through the air. Another prank consisted in applying two buckets of liquid soap to the tracks of the Arlberg rail- way, so that the train could not move forward on steep sections. The conductor had to carefully go in reverse and then pass with greater speed and momentum over the soaped tracks. Foreigners were also the victim of such pranks – for instance, South Tyroleans, who were at that time considered “Tschuschen” (Aus- trian derogatory slang for foreigners from southern European countries). Luigi’s room was shoveled full of snow through an open window. Peasants convinced a mentally retarded boy, Franzi, that he could jump from the roof of the mill using