Page - 176 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

176 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits One weekend in 2014, Abdullah entered Syria via Turkey. His parents only noticed that he was gone the next morning. However, he maintained contact to his mother via Facebook. He married a 17 -year -old Austrian girl from a Bosnian family, and his wife informed Abdullah’s parents in December that he had died a “martyr” in the battle for Kobane – killed in a US bombing that destroyed the building he was in; his body was never found. Discussion In his description of Abdullah, Schmidinger focuses mostly on the various Islamic splinter groups active in Austrian schools. Abdullah’s family situation is hardly described. We only have one point for conjecture: his younger brother was born very soon after he was; thus, at the age of four or five months old he already had to share his mother with a sibling (albeit in his mother’s uterus). However, if we read between the lines, we can infer that Abdullah’s parents cannot have known much about their son, his problems and psychic situation; he seems to not have confided in either of them. Case study: Petima Petima was the oldest daughter of Chechenian parents who had come to Austria shortly before she began school. She learned German so quickly that she got into the academic high school after she finished elementary school. There, she got good marks and held to the strict patriarchal rules of her father, who was more influenced by Adat (the Chechenian custom) than Islam. Petima’s mother did not wear a head scarf and was a well -educated middle - class woman. For both parents, it went without saying that Petima should go on to higher education. At the same time, great importance was attached to her virginity. She was not allowed to go to discos or concerts with her friends, and she had to conceal her visits to a swimming pool from her father. During a vacation job at a dentist’s office, Petima fell in love with a young man with Tunisian roots, Muhammad. Several weeks later, he went to Syria and joined the IS. Petima was unhappy, since her first great love had now disappeared. She kept him a secret from her parents. From the IS, Muhammad then made contact to Petima on Facebook, post- ing pictures of himself with a Kalashnikov, posing in front of severed heads and announcing that the IS would sell the prisoner Azidi women as slaves. Petima secretly made a plan to join Muhammad in Syria. With the help of a friend she had confided in, she fled her family’s apartment and flew to Syria. A week later, she informed them via WhatsApp from Raqqa that she now wished to lead her life according to the rules of Islam. She sent a picture of her marriage certificate with Muhammad. In spite of her mother’s massive attempts and those of her employer, Petima could not be convinced to return. She told of her first great love, of her heroic husband. She had no contact to her father.