Page - 191 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 191 parents. On the one hand, Babsi cared for her baby and did not attend a concert of her favorite band, but on the other hand, she continued to smoke pot, which was not good for the baby. Babsi’s attitude and relationship to the baby Although the birth was not particularly easy, once the baby lay on her belly she felt “everything was right then, ooh, it was so small, sooo sweet, ooh, that was crazy how tiny it was. I never would have thought a child can be so small.” Babsi told of her great insecurity taking care of her newborn child: she was “incredibly frightened” that she would draw the baby’s bathwater too hot, and had to get help from her mother. Her idea of a baby and taking care of it became more realistic: I always only thought about the great things with a child, but not getting up in the night and so. Or when somebody calls up and says, “You feel like coming out?”, before, I would have said right away, come over and pick me up or I’ll come myself. Now, uh oh, damn it, I can’t – and those are the negative sides, but you have to accept them. (Pankratz 1997, 79) Discussion What drives Babsi – who comes from an “orderly family” – to drug addiction and other desperate, self -destructive behaviors? This intense mode of self -destruction, “no future”, black “Gruftie” mourning apparel, and negative view of life point to an inner world full of guilt feelings and wishes for punishment. We know that adolescents, like young children, feel responsible not only for bad deeds they have committed but also for bad, envious or destructive fantasies – and believe they should be punished for these. Early rivalrous wishes for taking babies away from the mother, rendering her barren, occur in all children to a greater or lesser extent. With single children and youngest children like Babsi, there are no corrective experiences to confirm that these fantasies have not in fact destroyed the mother’s fertility. In spite of great jealousy, it is extremely calming for the older child to experience that the father and mother can produce something new and creative in spite of this destructive fantasy of clearing out the mother’s body. In adolescence, these repressed feelings are once again activated: the adolescent’s inner world is then projected onto outer reality, the “shitty world” with its pollution, overpopula- tion and armaments. Babsi does not wish to have a baby in such a world – and thus accomplishes an act of punishment in her fantasy: she did not allow her parents another baby, and now she does not allow herself one. This behavior indicates a strict, cruel superego: she punishes herself and does not allow herself a baby because she finds herself and her evil fantasies and thoughts to be so despicable. She becomes a ghost, a “Gruftie”, never goes in the sun and looks like death itself. She manages to comport herself at school in such a way that she is continually