Page - 204 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

204 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits who spoke about Mark’s problems at school: he was an outsider, teased by his colleagues for being “gay”, and even his former friend had recently changed sides and was now attacking him. His father presented Mark as a specially gifted boy who was bored at school because it was no challenge. Both parents negated his problems. The mother’s brother, who had been psychoanalyzed as an adult, urgently advised the mother not to wait but to quickly organize help for Mark. I invited Mark to two interviews in order that I could speak with his parents on a possible course of therapy. I will describe the first interview with Mark in detail, because it shows how quickly he established a relationship with me without using words. Here are notes from our first meeting: Mark is a nice -looking boy of 13 with brown hair, who looks much younger than his years. He has his schoolbag on his shoulders and carries a half -full bottle with juice in his left hand. He looks at me as if to ask where to go, so I show him the way to the consulting room. He goes in and again looks at me, unsure what to do, and glances at the lamp. I tell him he can sit wherever he wants. He puts his schoolbag and his bottle down and sits down in one of the two chairs, sitting there rather stiffly, not leaning back, putting his elbows on the arms. I tell him about the arrangement with his parents: that I would see him a few times to find out whether he would like to work with me and also whether I thought he could use some help to sort things out. He could do whatever we wanted (talk, play, draw). He looks at me as I talk, nods and says, “Hmm”. As soon as I stop he starts to scrutinize the room as if he were touching everything with a paintbrush. After a few minutes, I say: “You might not find it easy to be in a new room with a strange person so you want to take in what the room looks like.” When I talk he looks at me, nods and seems to agree. I always get a reaction from him. While he continues looking around his fingers move constantly on the arms of the chair. This is the pattern of the entire session. He looks around, sometimes he looks out of the window and watches the clouds, sometimes his eyes are fixed and his face has a sad expression, as if something is stirred up inside and he is preoccu- pied with it. I observe him and make several interpretations, for example, when he looks out of the window I connect it with his ambivalence about coming here, because he wishes to come, but partly his wish is to be somewhere else, far away. Later I comment on the different perspectives we both have, looking at the room from different angles. As he rarely looks at me, I point out that it seems easier for him to understand and concentrate on things, whereas people seem to be more complex and difficult to understand. After, I try to direct his attention to the toys in the box; he looks at the toys in a slightly curious way but does not move. I say: “You use your eyes to take in the surroundings and you study them care- fully. You seem to have ideas about how things work here.” As I wonder aloud whether he thought I would talk to his parents about his sessions, I make it clear that everything that happens here is private and will be kept confidential. He seems to relax a bit but not much. So I take up the theme some time later by addressing