Page - 260 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

260 Epilogue new world, one that as well as being terrifyingly unfamiliar, is full of wonder and beauty. In my book, I have illuminated the massive impact on the inner world of parents by their children’s projections and the mastering of this transitional phase, as well as parents’ unconscious envy of their children’s budding sexuality. By describing everyday scenes, diary entries and statements of adolescents, I attempted to render comprehensible the wide range of behavior in puberty and construct a link to the- ory. The goal of my theoretical explications was to achieve a better understanding and reduce the fear elicited by the surprising transformations of adolescents – but also to encourage attention on dangerous symptoms of withdrawal or self -harm. This double strategy also corresponds to the double strategy required for parents, teachers and educators of adolescents: to be open to new adolescent behaviors, but also to observe adolescents carefully and accompany them emotionally – a difficult balancing act. Another goal was to introduce a new perspective by showing hidden dimen- sions behind manifest behavior, using a psychoanalytic perspective. Adolescents’ attribution and displacement of their problems onto parents or educators – “my parents are starting to get on my nerves” – can irritate parents who care for their children (or, when they have access to the psychoanalytical perspective, perhaps amuse them). It is helpful when parents can exchange their impressions with one another. Single parents are particularly dependent for their assessments of their adolescent child’s behavior on a support system of friends, so as not to be defense- less against their child’s massive projections. An important means of mastering the turbulences of adolescence is adolescent humor, particularly within her peer group, which allows her to not take her prob- lems over -seriously. Transition to young adulthood is marked by relinquishing dependency on other people (parents, teachers), instead reconstructing them as stable images in the inner world, where they become a source of encouragement towards independ- ence and autonomous development of the personality. This process is, as I have shown, only possible after a phase of mourning for what has been given up. In a slow process – as with putting together a puzzle – parts can be integrated into the personality piece for piece, after intense conflicts and altercations. Only then can the capacity for closeness and sexuality in a stable relationship be developed. Finding one’s own position in the world, a “mind of one’s own”, and one’s own position in the world depends on the capability for experiencing and mastering love and separations. For the task of becoming oneself, now and always, involves relinquishing the denigrated and idealized version of the self, of other people and of rela- tionships, in favor of the real. It involves renegotiating dreams, choices and hopes, whether self -generated or imposed from without. It involves tolerat- ing opportunities lost, and roads not taken. . . . These sorts of losses test the