Seite - 171 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 171 emotional flatness and insignificance in his relationships. Such children who are neither in harmony with themselves nor the world often become outsiders, teased or tormented by stronger children at school, leading to a vicious cycle of violence and frustration. Such adolescents have not developed adequate psychic space for reflection, and they often do not recognize their own feelings, instead reacting in affect –they are often surprised by their own reactions (as Malcolm describes it, “I flip out”). Due to their insufficiently robust emotional control and inability to reflect on them- selves and others, the most trivial occasions can activate early traumatic experi- ences, rendering them extremely vulnerable. In order to protect themselves, they move within their bodies as if they were armored, often able to feel parts of their bodies only with difficulty and not even able to describe their feelings in words. The ego of such adolescents has become fragile through hurt, lack of respect and traumatic experiences. The intense effort to cope with some traumatic stimulus can lead to emotional numbness and a strategy of cognitive and affective avoid- ance. Within the peer group, other members also try to provoke the individual to lose his control – “flip out” – so that they can feel stronger than him. Alcohol, abuse of pills or self -injury can serve to numb the adolescent, helping him escape the awareness of his inner emptiness and desperation. Freud (1920) discussed the unconscious mechanism of repetitive compulsion, which he understood as a significant manifestation of the death instinct. The victim repeats his trauma, abuse or violent experience by evoking those same sadistic feelings in another person, in turn eliciting similar (i.e., sadistic) behavior in this other person. A two -and -a -half -year -old child was able to provoke his father into a rage by his sluggish, unreactive behavior, until the father lost control, yelling at him or hitting him (Diem -Wille 2003/2009). In this kind of sadomasochistic relationship, the actors are closely interconnected – but mostly the victim is more active. Seen psychodynamically, the reversal from the role of victim to that of perpetrator, often observed in violent adolescents, constitutes a flip of the same coin. The perpetrator projects her own feelings of helplessness and fear onto the victim, then observing her immature feelings in him, seemingly in triumph – while remaining trapped in the same pattern of behavior. The passively experienced vic- tim position is now reversed into that of the perpetrator, which Denzin (quoted in Sutterlüty 2001, 129) calls a “turning point experience”. The argument that the first act of violence “immediately concludes one’s own history of victimhood”, as Sutterlüty (2001, 130) characterizes it, cannot be confirmed through the psycho- analytic view, since the dynamic between perpetrator and victim remains the same. In the case study of R., he nevertheless manages to attain a new stage of resolution: instead of allowing himself to be provoked by the protagonist or resorting to vio- lence, he finds a solution through thinking. R. ultimately assumes the role of host, treating the provocateur to a beer and thus mastering the situation. The emotional liberation is considerable, since he could opt out of the sadomasochistic “game”. In anti -aggression training, an adolescent realizes that other people – not only the trainers, but also the other participants – are interested in him and his