Page - 209 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 209 the enormous significance of hearing a coherent sentence from Mark, I realized I would not let him off ten minutes early: if he wanted to, he should undertake this himself. Later I interpreted that he wanted to find out whether I would be glad like a teacher or student that the hour had been shortened; he wanted to see if I wanted to get rid of him early. This gave me goosebumps. When it was in fact 2:50, he looked at my clock and then at me. There was high tension in the air as we both remained seated. I returned his gaze without saying anything, and then he looked away. I said that he wanted to find out whether I truly wanted to have him here. Mark seemed to be deeply moved. He remained until the hour was finished and only got up after I had. Mark showed me that he had ambivalent feelings: he wished to be understood and also not understood. On the one hand, he seemed to triumph through his abil- ity to demonstrate his emotional distance. On the other hand, he showed me that he was deeply moved by my desire to keep him with me the entire hour and at my expressing his feelings and doubts. He kept attempting to force me to reject him. He was fearful and convinced that I would soon make him leave. His failure to attend some sessions was frustrating and irritating for me. I often thought he would never come again, and that would be the end of his analysis. I asked myself why he was not coming. Did he feel claustrophobic and afraid he could not leave? I interpreted his absence in various ways to him, telling him that we both knew he could come but that he preferred to hit me over the head with his absence, punishing me in order to feel strong and powerful. Particularly before the first Christmas holidays, his attendance was inconsistent. One way to contact him was writing him a letter noting that he had failed to appear for his two last sessions and that I expected him at the next session. These letters had an effect – he came to the next session. In the course of four years, I wrote several such letters, and he managed things so that his parents never saw them. Another difficult point was how to handle Mark’s invasive mother while keep- ing his analytic space free for him, and also obtain her cooperation in bringing him to the sessions. She felt closely bound to Mark. When she came alone to the second parent conference and I described Mark as a sensitive child who had dif- ficulties in expressing his feelings, she said: “Like me”. When I continued that Mark was very intelligent but vulnerable, she said, “He’s like me!” It was a refrain she repeated several times. It was difficult to deal with her; every transformation in Mark – including positive changes – seemed to threaten her. She was able to take up my suggestion to start therapy herself. Before Easter, she came and reported that Mark’s work at school had improved enormously, particularly his verbal expression. Earlier, when he had to write an essay, he would write only a few lines, but now he wrote two pages or more. He now had two good friends who also came to his house. He was very interested in computers and very good at them. But she could not link his improvement to our analysis. In the first year, the extent of his disturbed concrete thinking became evident. When I said: “You are afraid I will throw you out”, he seemed to hear “I will throw