Mothering Adolescent Daughters: A Psychodynamic Perspective

The psychology of motherhood during the daughter's adolescence is described in this article. Drawing on psychoanalytic and Jungian theoretical works as well as on research in adult development, the author describes (a) normal maternal development with an emphasis on the synergistic, maturational tasks of the mother and adolescent offspring; (b) maternal conflicts; and (c) counseling approaches that promote the mother's individuation and appropriate responses to her child.     

Migration and growth: separation-individuation processes in immigrant students in Israel

The central experiences of immigrant students in Israel are described and analyzed. It is suggested that immigration entails a process of separation from homeland as well as from internal representations of objects and of the self which are linked to homeland. This process is conceptualized in terms of Margaret Mahler's separation-individuation model. In the case of immigrant students, this process occurs concurrently and in interaction with individuation processes typical of adolescence. While motivated by adolescents' desire to avoid or delay psychological separation from their parents, immigration and absorption also revive adolescent conflicts and ambivalences. When the working through of these conflicts occurs in conjunction with the absorption process, immigration may become a growth experience that facilitates the developmental task of adolescence.     

'Do be my enemy for friendship's sake' (Blake)

The author explores our psychological need for enemies and the contribution this makes to overt conflicts in the external world. Enemies serve as an opposite from which we can differentiate ourselves, either as an individual or as a group; they help us to define our physical and psychological boundaries. Enemies provide a target and an outlet for our aggression and also for the projection of the shadow. They also provide the stimulus to individuation, through the heroic encounter with the enemy in the unfamiliar world outside the home, particularly in adolescence. The psychic integration of 'self' and 'enemy' is explored as the outcome of individuation.     

Imaginary companions, fantasy twins, mirror dreams and depersonalization.

Illustrative case material is presented to demonstrate genetic linkages between the presence of imaginary companions or fantasy twins and extensive mirror play in childhood and early adolescence, and the appearance of mirror dreams and depersonalization in later adolescence and adulthood. The defensive splitting of the self-representations observable in these phenomena is viewed as a means of warding off castration anxiety and anxiety about object loss, anxieties which arise because of conflicts primarily centering on intense aggressive drive derivative wishes. Formulations about depersonalization are discussed.     

Self-Knowledge and Depressive Symptoms in Late Adolescence: A Study Using the Repertory Grid Technique

The goal of this study is to explore the relationship, suggested by recent developmental approaches, between several aspects of self-knowledge organization and depressive symptomatology in late adolescence, within the comprehensive framework of Kelly's personal construct psychology. The repertory grid technique was used to obtain six measures of self-knowledge organization: global differentiation; polarization; presence of conflicts; and discrepancies between actual self, ideal self, and others. Two inventories were used to create two samples of late adolescents according to their level of depressive symptoms. Results supported the expectations of greater global differentiation and actual–ideal self discrepancy (or lower self-esteem) for adolescents with depressive symptoms, as well as a higher likelihood of intrapersonal conflicts. However, discrepancies between self (actual or ideal) and others (identification, and perceived adequacy of others), and polarization showed no significant differences. Furthermore, the association of symptom severity with different grid measures was stronger for adolescents with depressive symptoms. Results and limitations of this study are discussed, and the potential of using personal construct theory and the repertory grid technique in studies of self-knowledge and psychological adjustment during adolescence is explored.     

Die Auswirkungen der Wende 1989 auf Adoleszente

The significance of adolescence for psychosocial development is a controversial theme with discussions ranging from an emphasis on the importance of early childhood to the ideas propagated by Freud that the dynamics of adolescence play an important role in the psychological development of the individual and transculturation. The course of adolescence provides a starting point for understanding the psychodynamics of patients, which is often given insufficient consideration. Today, it can repeatedly be seen that patients in their mid-thirties are coming for treatment: patients who experienced their adolescence during the period of political upheaval in Germany. For a variety of reasons this proves to have been a vulnerable life phase, above all for East Germans. Puberty and adolescence comprise developmental tasks whose completion in a crisis situation, such as represented by the political change in East Germany with the reunification process, suffered considerably. Accordingly, the consequences of this conflict-laden coping process can be revealed during later therapy in transference and central relationship conflicts. The adolescents made considerable efforts to adapt to the new conditions, however, without adolescent altercations with GDR parents and conditions having taken place in sufficient measure. The treatment of a female patient is presented for whom the political change during adolescence proved to be a critical life event. Her narcissistic deficits together with her fragile identity were exacerbated as a result of the social upheavals. It is demonstrated how this ??critical life event?? was intertwined with her earlier psychological structure, the problems of adolescence and her search for identity during the course of psychoanalysis.     

‘Sleeping beauties’: succession problems of adolescence

The author explores the succession problems of adolescence. She uses the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale Sleeping Beauty to consider various characters and narratives possible in the analytic field during the succession process. Use of the characters in a fairy tale allows an analyst to play with the different roles the patient unconsciously assigns her. The author conceives of the avoidance of adolescent turbulence as a common reaction to adolescence, but one that can also become entrenched, and result in a restriction of emotional growth. The paper explores the psychic isolation of adolescence and the splitting required to manage the conflicting desires of the phase. The persistent absence of passion, including in the analytic process, constitutes a psychic retreat from developmental turbulence. The analyst of such an adolescent may need to allow them to be ‘somnolent’ for some time, but may eventually need to wake them (metaphorically) or even pierce the somnolent, avoidant state. The author uses clinical vignettes of late adolescents to demonstrate such transitions, exploring her countertransference experience as well as the reaction of adults to the succession process of adolescence.     

The other side of Oedipus

The Oedipus complex has been understood as a series of conflicts between feelings of love and hate (sexuality and aggression) in the relationship between the child and his/her parents. This article presents a different view, defining oedipal struggles as conflicts between love and care, sexual desires and self- and object-preservative needs. The crucial conflict the child has to deal with is: to love the one and nevertheless to preserve the other (the rival). Further, the author distinguishes between monolithic conflicts, which are conflicts between different objects of one drive's strivings, and binary conflicts, which involve the objects of both basic drives. In three illustrative examples, she shows that monolithic conflicts can indicate a regressive movement, while binary conflicts tend to foster a progression in the analytic work.     

One life between two people: Some themes from the analysis of a nine-to-fifteen-year-old anorexic girl

The author discusses four inter-related themes of late adolescence: birth/death throes, oblivious objects, manic defences and the potential for physical symptoms, sometimes in emergency form. These issues will be elucidated through the psychoanalysis of a late adolescent who was bulimic and binge drinking. Though her symptoms were severe, elements of her dynamics are seen as characteristic of late adolescence. The definitive separation–individuation processes of late adolescence are seen as a final death throe of childhood and a birth throe of adulthood. In these death throes, the adolescent can see objects as oblivious. The late adolescent can resort to manic leaps to negotiate passages she feels unready for. Such leaps sometimes take the form of physical symptoms, sometimes in crisis form, as late adolescents separate more definitively than in earlier developmental periods.     

Some developmental characteristics of adult psychotherapy groups

This paper highlights some developmental characteristics of adult psychotherapy groups and the relationships among them. It argues that members of a therapy group will experience and have an opportunity to resolve within the group itself normal developmental conflicts of adult life such as learning to establish intimate relationships. In addition, members will reexperience unresolved developmental conflicts of childhood and adolescence that frequently prevent adequate resolution of adult developmental tasks, and have an opportunity to rework them. Lastly, because of the essential isomorphism of therapy groups, members' developmental conflicts will be experienced and dealt with when the group-qua-group is dealing with parallel developmental struggles in its own life.     

The Impact of Early Interpersonal Experience on Adult Romantic Relationship Functioning: Recent Findings from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation

Adopting an organizational view on social development, we have investigated how interpersonal experiences early in life prospectively predict how well individuals resolve relationship conflicts, recover from conflicts, and have stable, satisfying relationships with their romantic partners in early adulthood. We have also identified specific intervening interpersonal experiences during middle childhood and adolescence that mediate the connection between how individuals regulated their emotions with their parents very early in life and as young adults in their romantic relationships. We discuss the many advantages of adopting an organizational view on social development.     

“Last Night I Dreamed I Went to Manderly Again”: Vicissitudes of Maternal Identifications in Late Female Adolescence

To move forward into sexual maturity with a sense of bodily agency, the girl must internalize identifications with the mother as a sexual adult in her own right. These new identifications arouse intense internal conflict brought on by internalization with its unconscious association with destructive oral aggression and the archaic fear of retaliatory maternal rage. The unconscious dilemma is how to metabolize the sexual mother and also keep her alive as an internal resource. I present material from analytic sessions and literature to illustrate a characteristic defensive fantasy of late adolescence and the underlying conflicts that the fantasy conceals and attempts to ward off. This fantasy links aggression, internalization, and associated unconscious phantasies of oral sadism. Internalization may be derailed if the daughter's conflicts around aggression are felt to be intolerable. When all goes reasonably well, the late-adolescent girl tolerates the intense aggression associated with internalization and metabolizes representations of the sexual mother as a resonating internal presence that supports and enhances progressive development.     

Konflikt- und Strukturachse der Operationalisierten Psychodynamischen Diagnostik des Kindes- und Jugendalters

This paper presents the advantages of a comprehensive Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostic in childhood and adolescence (OPD-CA) for subsequent treatment planning. Information about the conflict and structural axes as a function of age, gender, diagnosis and proposed form of treatment (outpatient/inpatient) was analyzed in a group of 116 patients. Independent from the diagnosis, a similar ranking in the importance of conflicts was found. Self-esteem conflicts were more prominent for inpatient children and adolescents and identity conflicts were more prevalent in children and adolescents who were at the start of outpatient therapy. Patients with an indication for inpatient treatment had a significantly lower level in all structural dimensions. This study analyzes the reasons for these findings.     

Remaining or becoming secure: Parental sensitive support predicts attachment continuity from infancy to adolescence in a longitudinal adoption study

In a longitudinal study with 125 early adopted adolescents, we examined continuity of attachment from infancy to adolescence and the role of parental sensitive support in explaining continuity or discontinuity of attachment. Assessments of maternal sensitive support and infant attachment (Strange Situation Procedure) were completed when infants were 12 months old. When the children were 14 years old, we observed mothers' sensitive support during a conflict discussion. The adolescents' attachment representations were assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview. Mothers of secure adolescents showed significantly more sensitive support during conflicts than did mothers of insecure adolescents. Overall, no continuity of attachment from infancy to adolescence was found. However, maternal sensitive support in early childhood and adolescence predicted continuity of secure attachment from 1 to 14 years, whereas less maternal sensitive support in early childhood but more maternal sensitive support in adolescence predicted children's change from insecurity in infancy to security in adolescence. We conclude that both early and later parental sensitive support are important for continuity of attachment across the first 14 years of life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Parent-adolescent conflict in early adolescence

This study explored parent-adolescent conflict during the early years of adolescence (ages 11 to 14). The responses of 357 youths in Grades 6, 7, and 8 to the Issues Checklist (Prinz, Foster, Kent, & O'Leary, 1979) revealed frequent conflicts with parents over a sizable number of issues during this period, peaking in Grade 7 between parents and sons, with exchanges between parents and daughters consistently more than those with sons across the three grades. There was considerable variation in both the frequency and intensity of conflict across specific issues. In addition, a consistent pattern of gender-typing was observed in conflicts between parents and daughters, reflecting traditional gender role stereotypes. The results of this study point to the importance of examining both the frequency and intensity of conflict, the specific issues over which there is conflict, and the gender of the participants in order to more fully understand the nature of parent-adolescent conflict during early adolescence.     

Resolving Nationalist Conflicts: Promoting Overlapping Identities and Pooling Sovereignty—The 1998 Northern Irish Peace Agreement

Nationalist and ethnic conflicts are a continuing source of tension in the post–Cold War period. The underlying factors affecting such conflicts are threat perception, ethnic security dilemmas, and lack of trust between nationalist/ethnic groups. The challenge is to find solutions to these conflicts. International institutions can establish trust and reduce the ethnic security dilemma by providing multiple forums of representation, promoting overlapping identities, and pooling sovereignty. Pooling sovereignty across a number of international representative bodies leads to increased access to governmental policymaking, with each party having a stake in government, and leads to a reduction in political tension and conflict. Thus, international parliamentary institutions may provide a solution to these conflicts. The British-Irish Peace Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) of 1998 is examined as an illustration of this argument.     

Mothers' ambivalence with their babies and toddlers: manifestations of conflicts with aggression

In this paper the author continues his study of conflicts over aggression in women, discussing the implications for contemporary theories of feminine psychology of observations of mothers in parent/child groups with their infants and toddlers. Many mothers experience conflicts over aggression (both in themselves and in their children) and become intolerant of their ambivalence toward their children. The author suggests that this observation provides an avenue that allows an integration of psychoanalytic ideas about maternity and childrearing with psychoanalytic understandings of women's conflicts about achievement in the social realm outside the home. In both roles, difficulties mastering conflicts with aggression may cause women to struggle profoundly, and to experience problems, in successfully negotiating their important life goals, whether the goals refer to their roles as effective mothers or their roles as effective individuals in the social sphere outside the home. Some women may demonstrate these difficulties in one sphere or the other, some in both, and others in neither. The author suggests on the one hand that we need to eliminate the concept of normality when considering the activities of women, and on the other hand that we need to normalize the omnipresence of ambivalence in the psychology of women.     

Identity Strategies Among Adolescent Girls of Moroccan Descent in the Netherlands

Sometimes it is assumed that Moroccan girls in the Netherlands have a problematic adolescence: They are supposed to be "caught between two cultures." Adolescence can be seen as the stage of life in which individuals should develop their own identity by exploring different alternatives. Moroccan girls, however, may not have these possibilities for exploration during adolescence; they seem to be restricted in many ways. This article first looks at these presumed restrictions. In the specific context of belonging to a minority group, the girls' parents regard the traditional rules to be very important. The notion of virginity, for instance, can be a (symbolic) boundary between the migrant community and the society. However, the girls themselves may also choose these traditions. Especially religion provides a "proper" set of rules in a sometimes confusing world. Should these girls, then, be seen as primarily foreclosed in their identity process? And, if so, is that why their adolescence is supposed to be problematic? The girls in this research, however, do not seem to have many problems in the process of their identity construction. They do mention other kinds of problems or challenges. Following traditional rules in a non-Muslim society can cause practical problems or even loyalty conflicts. In response to this, the girls seem to have developed certain strategies that they use to combine the conflicting values.     

From biography to theory: the role of Anna Freud in the emergence of the ‘adolescent process’

Some aspects of Anna Freud’s life reveal the existence of specifically adolescent conflicts, which can be tied to some of her theoretical and clinical discoveries in the field of adolescent psychoanalysis. Her historical input in the gradual construction of a theoretical corpus on adolescence has often been ignored. These links between biography and theory gave rise to a movement of conceptualisation, making it possible to develop a psychoanalytic metapsychology of adolescence: indeed, emerged such notions as asceticism, intellectualisation in relationship with anorexia and the struggle against the genitalisation of the adolescent body. Today, the Annafreudian school of thought has remained the main source of investigation and theoretical transmission of what is now called the adolescent process.