Page - 178 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

178 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits water. A play -acted pillow fight could have quickly become dangerous, and I had to set clear limits to it. For a time, I had to clear away his wooden blocks, since he was threatening to break the window with them. When he again broke his cars and demonstrated his broken inner world influenced by violent and unprotective adults, he was surprised to receive new Matchbox cars from me – as a reward for working through his problems according to my psychoanalytic method. He was often afraid of his own destructivity and protected his cars from himself by put- ting them in his drawer safely when he flew into a rage. Neglected children’s need to protect themselves from unexpectedly friendly and understanding adults through denial or apathy indicates the great psychic pain that arises when something longed for and unattainable now becomes possible. “Why are you talking to me, hit me instead, that’s what I know,” answers one adolescent in a stationary psychotherapeutic facility in Ursula Pav’s book . . . and when the thread breaks, I only want to strike again (2010, 8). This unusual and valuable book can be recommended for teachers and supervisors. She draws a detailed picture of the work with heavily traumatized children and adolescents in the context of a project called “Prevention of Violence”, with qualitative methods of participant observation and narrative interviews affording insight into the inner world of these adolescents. Particularly in the therapeutic and analytic work with this group of adolescents, collaboration with teachers and other pedagogues is of great significance. I believe that this “Prevention of Violence” project should not only allow flexibility to the adolescents, but above all enable insight into the mastery and techniques of transference – as Bion termed it, “work under fire” – where massive projections are often shot at the therapist like cannonballs, projec- tions that can also reveal important preliminary information on the participating adolescents. In conclusion, I wish to point out how important it is to offer problem fami- lies help at an early stage. In therapeutic work with parents and young children, emerging problems can be addressed and ameliorated at their roots if solutions are found together. Usually, problems extending over generations are underestimated, so that the parents in a parent -child therapy often are availing themselves of the possibility to talk about and work through their own traumatic experiences as chil- dren for the first time. “If abused adolescents were better cared for, supported and offered therapeutic help, long -term consequences could be considerably dimin- ished” (Streeck -Fischer 2004, 35). Therapy in homes and orphanages, as well as for adoptive parents, constitutes another important focus. 6.2 The problems of teenage pregnancy The phenomenon of early pregnancy during the teenager years may well be unplanned, but it is often the expression of an unconscious wish for a baby – and this wish may entail the desire to both give and receive affection. In particular, girls who did not grow up with their own mothers but instead with their grandparents