Page - 229 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 229 to tell. When I proposed a third session per week, she understood this as a proof that I could tolerate her, as crazy and terrible as she was. She wanted to use this chance to get to know herself. Due to organizational reasons and to her parents’ failure to support her, there was no third session, which would have greatly helped her. Chrisse was able to accept clearly my interpretations and showed that she felt understood. Verbalizing the link between her dreams and feelings made conscious her massive unconscious reproaches against her parents and her feeling of being abandoned and lonely, thus diminishing her fear and inner pressure. She was able to speak with her parents of this directly afterwards in family therapy in the psy- chiatric ward. Further development of therapy Chrisse could now participate once again in school, and her medication was reduced. The psychiatrist said her development was very positive: earlier she could not articulate, but now she addressed problems with other family members directly. In our sessions, it was important to realize whether she wished to pacify me with her “normality” and secretly plan suicide. The sessions constituted an unburdening for her: she brought her burdens to me, and could thus fulfill her tasks in her outside life. I did not always succeed in taking in her worries and fear with the requisite seriousness. It helped when I could put into words how great her confusion and fear of a new relapse were. She could recognize that she was different from other girls. The demands of school constituted great stress for her. Her fear of being put back into the psychi- atric ward could be understood in a second sense: it constituted a retreat, a place where it was not unusual to have such problems. Between the two poles of hospi- tal and school, therapy represented a compromise. Here, she could be herself and show her symptoms, coming to understand them with me. She could listen to my offer of a third session without taking this as a sign of relapse or a demand for hard work – more like an oasis. She began the next session by saying: “Thank God, here’s someone I can talk about my hallucinations to!” (And someone who did not provoke fear in her, I would add.) This was a relief for her. She could also dis- cuss how hard it was to fulfill the demands of her strict teachers, in particular her French teacher. She still idealized death – as an escape, an alternative to winning the difficult struggle for normality. This made it all the more important and reliev- ing to have access to analysis. Her constructive, hopeful side became stronger. From a Monday session at the end of September: She arrived ten minutes too early, and I requested her to wait in the waiting room. She went to the toilet. Chrisse: I just took my medication. I forgot to take them at school, now it was two hours too late. (looks at her watch) A: When you were waiting, which was difficult for you, you remembered to take your medication.