Page - 245 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 245 doors and window as well as she could with towels, opened the oven, put her head inside and turned on the gas. Although the au pair girl arrived punctually at 9:00 am and rang the doorbell, nobody let her in. Since the inhabitant of the apart- ment under Plath had also been induced into deep sleep by the gas, he also heard nothing. Thus, the door was only forced open at 11:00 am. Plath’s body was still warm. She had left a note behind: “Please call Dr. N.” – the therapist she planned to visit – with his telephone number. But it was too late (Alvarez 1971, 51ff ). As with Sylvia Plath, thoughts of suicide often go back to very early trauma- tizing experiences or are an expression of emotional conflicts. In adolescence, thoughts of death play a particular role – where it is often unclear how serious a threat this constitutes. Adolescence is a time of stormy physical and psychic development, and the restructuring of the adolescent’s inner world is so dramatic that he often cannot reflect calmly on this. The newly developed adolescent physique, sexual matu- rity and the development of physical strength as well as the possibilities society now affords would make it possible for the adolescent to realize his fantasies and unconscious wishes. The young child who fantasizes sexual contact or hav- ing a baby with the parent of the opposite sex knows somehow that this is not realistic – that the boy does not really have such a big penis as his father, that the father cannot really make a baby with the girl, that the wish to vanquish or kill the paternal rival cannot be carried out. But now, these things are physically possible and cause great fear – a fear entailed in all the physical changes over which the adolescent has no control; even if she wishes to stop or reverse them, she is help- less. The great insecurity, along with the question of “Who am I?”, can then lead to the question: “Do I want to live as I am now?” The adolescent is also now capa- ble of killing himself. I will discuss this particular constellation. The questions of “Who am I? What am I living for?” are real questions with real challenges. On the unconscious level, they can be an expression of guilt feelings evoked through an unconscious wish for punishment (see Anderson 2009). Before we now examine these inner dynamics more closely, we should remind ourselves that as with small children, adolescents (and adults, for that matter) hold themselves culpable not only for their bad deeds, but also for those they committed in their fantasies. This is related to the residue of magical thinking operative in the young child – for example, one so angry at her mother that she wishes she were dead, consequently feeling guilty when the mother dies or harms herself in an accident. Suicide and suicide attempts as a social problem According to the 2014 WHO report, “Preventing Suicide”, 800,000 people between the ages of 12 and 19 commit suicide each year. In Austria, 1,319 people committed suicide in 2012 – if we do not consider ambiguous cases where death is caused by risky driving or sports influenced by unconscious suicidal wishes. Particularly regrettable are adolescent suicides, where the perpetrator’s life lies before him or her. It is thus especially important to consider the types of inner