Technician in Adolescent Psychoanalysis

Abstract

The numerous theoretical contributions which during the last years have helped to enlighten the adolescent period, have determined changes in the analytic technique. When centring the adolescent conflict mostly in pre-oedipical bonds and the unsteadiness and fragility of being, its expression shows lack of narcissistic confirmation. The authors start out from the point of view that adolescence shapes a primarily narcissistic conflict whose relevant expression is the search of one’s own territory of qualify and enable one’s being. This paper goes thoroughly into the idea of territory, since its psychoanalytic meaning concerns and covers diverse aspects. The mourning process is the adolescent’s permanent company, but mourning the ego is specially important. The adolescent subsitutes childhood identifications by new ones which produce experiences of “emptiness in his being” since these identifications imply a whole process. The road on which the adolescent moves is a real labyrinthe-road. The importance of empathy is pointed out from the angle of the contributions to analytic technique. The analyst, rather than indicating ways or choices with
his interpretation, must accompany the adolescent in his search for and by himself. He must avoid taking the parents’ place, a danger which is always present in analysis. At the same time, iii a correlative manner, the analyst’s countertransference la to be mentioned, concerning the possibility of identifying himself with the parents. The setting also has its own features. As regards transference, some precisions are made, as for example, that the main part of analysis lies somewhere else, and that it must be left aside for a while, etc. Finally, adolescence la defined as a “critical juncture”, where the analyst must pay attention to the transit situation in which the adolescent finde himself.