Page - 235 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 235 A: You are showing me how hurt you are when you show me your finger, and you feel hurt by me. Chrisse: I feel good, everything’s ok. (As she speaks, she pulls her scarf around her neck until she is half -strangled.) A: You are showing me two things at the same time: you say how good you feel and at the same time how you can’t get any air, when you pull your scarf so tight, how strongly you are under pressure. Your parents want to end your sessions. Chrisse: That’s a habit of mine, I always do that when I’m wearing a scarf. It’s ok. (She turns to the plants and strokes them.) A: You are stroking the plants and thoughts are going through your head. Chrisse: What do you think, what will happen when my parents die? A: You are telling me it is like death when you won’t have any sessions anymore. Then you think what will happen when your parents die. Even if we can’t continue therapy now, you could come back later. It was a painful parting not only for Chrisse but also for me, who understood how urgently Chrisse needed more sessions. The parents quoted her psychiatrist, who had taken Chrisse off medication, contending that she was doing much better. Chrisse was not strong enough to make her own decisions. I thought she was still very fragile, and her thinking required outer help and stabilization. The parents thanked me for the good collaboration and were appreciative of how much ther- apy had helped Chrisse. I thought Chrisse’s conviction that she could heal herself constituted a form of megalomania that was supported by the parents. In a letter, I offered that she could turn to me again. Case study of liberation from the maternal web: Vinzenz I will now describe the development of Vinzenz from the perspective of his mother’s analysis. At the beginning of his mother’s analysis, Vinzenz was in a psychiatric ward, since he had poured alcohol over his mother and spat on her. She called the police to have him committed. She knew that she was too intimately bound to her son and urgently sought help, not knowing what she should do. Family background Vinzenz is the second son in his family; he has one brother two years older than him and another four years younger. Both parents work for a living. From the age of three, he was conspicuously difficult. The family had various kinds of therapy, but nothing really helped. Vinzenz became quite obese, he weighed approxi- mately 100 kilos, did not finish school and is now 18 years old. His older brother has already moved out and is a university student; the younger brother is in the fifth class of middle school. At the age of 14, Vinzenz was first committed to a psychiatric ward because he became violent with his younger brother, beating him