Page - 231 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 231 said in an irritated way: “Was it two or three?” I said: “I don’t know!” She asked if I wanted to talk about it and I shook my head. Then she understood. A: You are talking about the tactless French teacher and are glad that I treat you differently. Chrisse: Yes. I am more normal -crazy, I don’t yell. I’d like to yell: “You die!” I drew something at school: a sword, a dagger, a knife. A song text that fits here too: blood running down. A: You show me pictures and tell me what thoughts occupy you. But you are also excited by these threatening objects, they fascinate you. Chrisse: Yes, I like reading books about vampires. I often sing the song “I am bleeding, do you forget me?” as I read. A: Now at the end of the session, you think of this song and also the question of whether I will forget you when you leave. Discussion Chrisse showed how glad she was to be able to speak about all of her threatening and fascinating fantasies. Here, she could speak about her fascination with the attraction of death, blood and pain without my becoming tactless or yelling as her mother did. It calmed her when I understood her fear and concern over this dark side in her. Indeed, she basically managed the physical effort of commuting to school and scholastic demands, which constituted a major satisfaction to her. She was reasonable enough to recognize that she was different from other people. The French teacher had a rough side, as presumably did Chrisse’s mother – the side that prevented her from empathizing with Chrisse’s burdens and confusion. At therapy, she was not compelled to present herself as normal. Then, her con- structive side also became visible, the side that wanted to become healthy again. A third session per week would enable more closeness between her and her ana- lyst, something she wanted but also did not want, since it would demonstrate her neediness. In countertransference, I sometimes reacted with fatigue at the sessions and found Chrisse’s stories very burdensome. I tried to be internally open as to whether she was becoming more stable and her situation improving, or whether she only wanted to pacify me and secretly was considering suicide. When she was reading, she was also able to make me tired as a countertransferential reaction, in order that I not feel her horror. Two weeks later, Chrisse’s mother phoned me and said she thought two ses- sions per week were too many. On the one hand, I thought she seemed jealous that Chrisse entrusted me with thoughts that she did not entrust to her mother. Actu- ally, she could not recognize the seriousness of her daughter’s problem. If she put herself into her daughter’s shoes, she would like to run away. She acted as if the therapy was the problem, as if it created problems, and denied the link between Chrisse’s improvement and the therapeutic work. She wanted to run away, just as she had tried to push aside her problems and not grieve for her first baby she had given up.