Page - 261 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Epilogue 261 capacity to mourn, to feel remorse, to take responsibility, to experience guilt and also gratitude. (Waddell 2002, 177) Thus, becoming an adult is no easy goal, but remains a lifelong task, a continual aspiration that can never be fully attained. The restructuring of the psyche and inner world in adolescence also constitutes a new chance for adolescents, psy- chotherapists and parents. Massive symptoms can no longer be so easily ignored and suppressed and thus often serve as an impetus for the adolescent to get thera- peutic help. The stormy period of travelling from childhood into adulthood has been com- pared with the journey from a relinquished motherland to a new country (Grin- berg and Grinberg 1989). The goal is often indistinct where the emigrant will land and how quickly she will feel at home there. The new territory in adult life is genital sexuality. Which sexual identity will I discover in myself? The core of sexual orientation is already set at the age of one -and -a -half to two years old, but the time of its discovery is open – something that cannot be consciously and rea- sonably controlled, but instead explored and accepted. The adolescent attitude of fearful avoidance often remains in place for decades, until somebody has the con- fidence at the age of 30 or 40 to acknowledge her homosexuality, to “come out”. Sometimes, the impulse of a man to be together with another man sexually is only given free rein in old age – perhaps only in an exceptional situation. But within the heterosexual group, sexual desires can go unspoken and only experienced with prostitutes in a “strict chamber”. The force of sexuality, intensive pleasure and the drive towards satisfaction can be repressed for an entire life. The fear of closeness is often even more threatening because it reveals wishes for dependency and neediness: a 70 -year -old man about to embark on a new, intense relationship can almost collide with a streetcar – presumably wishing unconsciously to pun- ish himself or to see whether the woman walking beside him pulls him away and saves his life. Sometimes it is only possible in old age – within hailing distance of death – to fulfill the wish for emotional and sexual intimacy. All of these themes have their origins in adolescence, but they can be avoided for an entire life or be satisfied only very late (or never, for that matter). In his book Rites of Passage (1980), for which he received the Nobel Prize, William Golding tells the story of Reverend Colley from the perspective of Talbot, a young aristocrat, who investigates Colley’s case during a six -month trip to Australia. After the sailors had gotten Colley drunk and involved him in homosexual acts, he died from shame over the homosexual lust he experi- enced during an orgiastic party. Talbort attempts to reconstruct these events from Colley’s diaries. When the sailors mention the participation of an officer, the investigation is broken off by the captain since homosexual acts (“buggery”) are punishable by death. Colley receives a burial with full honors on the ship, and the case is closed. The search for sexual identity, often fraught with shame and guilt, is thus not always finished in puberty, but remains a challenge for