Page - 213 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 213 A: (after five minutes) You are withdrawing into sleep, because you don’t want to know anything about the approaching summer pause. M: (fast asleep) A: (after several minutes) When you fall fast asleep, you can perhaps express your wish or fantasy to be inside me and make me watch over you. M: (sleeps calmly) A: (three minutes before end of the session) Now you are showing me your other side, that you want to stay here and not go away, and I have to be the cruel one when I tell you the session is over in two minutes. M: (does not react, but instead sleeps so soundly that it appears nothing could awake him) A: (stand up and raise my voice) Mark, the session is over! M: (no reaction) A: (take a pillow and touch his arm twice) Mark. M: (opens his eyes and looks to see whether I have touched him, then notices that it was the pillow; he looks at the pillow, which I have put on the table, looks at me long and deeply, stands up, shakes my hand and leaves the room) I believe this “anxiety corner” signifies a secret world to which Mark withdraws in order to cut himself off from reality – like a refuge, where something draws him in. His behavior reminds me of Bion’s article “On Hallucination”, where Bion writes that the patient uses “the hallucinatory activity as an attempt to deal with the dangerous parts of the personality” (Bion 1957c, 71). When I spoke of Mark’s irritation, he split his feelings and withdrew into sleep, like a baby who flees into sleep from an unbearable situation. Although it was unclear what he saw in that corner, he apparently could not take his eyes from it. Perhaps he had projected the dangerous parts of his personality onto the analyst, who then became a danger- ous object. I attempted to obtain a clearer reaction by later saying I thought he saw something in that corner, but he could not tell me what it was – a shadow, a figure, a movement. Towards the end of Mark’s analysis, his mother told me that he sometimes felt heat waves or cold waves. Later, when I was talking about my vacation, he withdrew back into sleep, because he did not wish to think about the attendant separation. Sometimes when he had arrived, he stormed into the therapy room and looked into the fear -corner as if somebody were waiting for him there, and then threw me a short, controlling glance, although he seemed absent. I interpreted that he thought these things were real and could truly pull him closer and closer; that he went into another world with the thought that he is powerful and has the entire world under control. He then relaxed, released his crossed arms and put one hand on the other in a protective gesture. I understood that as a reaction to my inter- pretation, telling him I thought there was another part of his personality that was quietly powerful and enabled him to come to therapy in order to conquer all his inner obstacles. After a pause, I said that he had felt himself understood and safe