Page - 223 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 223 In family therapy, Chrisse had learned about strictly kept family secrets and now told them to me, probably to share her sense of shock. The darkness in her fantasy world is connected to the “dark crime”, her mother’s giving away a baby. She attempts to master her threatening present and uncertain future through fan- tasy. She depicts a dark family situation with a mother who cannot empathize with her baby. I assumed that Chrisse’s unconscious was communicating the great bur- den her mother had suffered under. What does a mother who gave away her first baby feel when she now held baby Chrisse in her arms, hungry for love and pro- tection? Could she admit her guilt feelings at giving up her first baby? Could she mourn? We know that losses that are not “mourned” but instead suppressed take their place as “ghosts in the nursery” (Fraiberg 1980). It is as if this renounced child stands between Chrisse and her mother as a barrier. The mother’s inability to adequately react to her daughter’s needs, her lack of “reverie”, seemed to me to be destructive, passive aggression. How can a baby recognize such complex links? Babies perceive other persons through their senses, including tactile qualities, the voice and skin contact. It is conceivable that Chrisse’s mother was not able to pick her up with a confident, firm touch, which would convey security and a sense of the baby’s own skin against the mother. Was Chrisse’s mother able to speak baby talk with her, waiting for her to answer – or did thoughts of her first baby, the one she gave away, interfere? With psychoanalytic observation, we see quite clearly whether the mother and baby are in “harmony” (Stern 1985) or whether discordant tones arise as in an orchestra when one instrument plays a melody that does not fit, disturbing the harmony. If Chrisse’s mother could not truly establish emotional contact to her as a baby, then this would have created a discordance that the baby then showed in her reactions, creating a “second skin” (Bick 1968) as substitute for being held by its mother or being held at all. Such a baby must attempt to hold itself and could escape into a pseudo -independence. How often did Chrisse attempt to establish eye contact with her mother and her mother was so deep in painful thoughts that she did not notice this? Could Chrisse experience the shine in her mother’s eyes when she was glad of her baby’s existence? All of these frustrations and disappointments can be stored in a baby, and if they are not compensated by enough loving and friendly experiences, can lead to a dangerous emotional storm or outbreak. (In a psychotic episode, the structure of conscious- ness collapses, so that it makes sense not to see the patient on two consecutive days, but at the beginning and end of a given week.) In later conversations with the parents, the mother told me that Chrisse was a “non -demanding baby”, lay alone in bed for hours and amused herself. Only my interpretation that the mother might not have adequately comprehended Chrisse’s need for attention made the mother reflect. She said that she had often hit her children, but then given up because it had been of no use. Chrisse was stubborn. The mother had the role of disciplinarian in the family. Even in this acute crisis, the parents showed no comprehension of the degree of Chrisse’s disturbance; the mother reacted with emotional flatness, as if she could not feel anything besides her own depression. Attempts to help the parents to see