Donald Winnicott famously said that 鈥榯here鈥檚 no such thing as a baby鈥�1 when describing the interconnectedness of mother and child in the earliest stages of life. Although we grow up and away from this early stage, it鈥檚 often聽difficult to establish where family influence begins and ends, for ourselves and our clients.
Some counsellors will be working with primary school children, but many will be seeing clients who are negotiating (in every sense) their adolescence. We recognise that adolescence is the second time round for the stage of separation and individuation from family experienced聽by the young child 鈥� that of 鈥榤e鈥� and 鈥榥ot me鈥� described by Winnicott1 鈥� which makes it necessary to 鈥榮hake聽the family tree鈥� to see what falls before automatically seeing the client only as an individual.
So what do parents hand down to their children? To give an example, one of the issues I encounter most as a school counsellor is anxiety. Clients claim the anxiety as their own, but often I鈥檓 not so sure that it belongs to them alone. In practice, the conversation might go something like this (let鈥檚 call our hypothetical client Claire). Claire is just starting in the sixth form and has come to see me because she is feeling anxious 鈥榓bout everything鈥�. Around the third session, I suggest to Claire that she doesn鈥檛 seem overly anxious. In fact, she comes across as a sensible self-possessed young woman who seems to enjoy taking charge of situations when her friends are in difficulty. Claire takes a deep breath, sighs, then tells me of a time when she was younger and she didn鈥檛 want to go to the shops with her mum. It was a long time ago and Claire can鈥檛 remember why she didn鈥檛 want to go or what emotions were in play. What Claire does remember is her mum tutting and saying: 鈥榊ou always were an anxious child!鈥� In those six words, a spell was cast. Now, whenever Claire feels uneasy or confused, she attributes it to her anxious inner child. She doesn鈥檛 at first believe me when I tell her that a certain level of adult anxiety is normal 鈥� healthy, even. I recount to her some of the situations she has described being in herself, of how competently she handled them, and of the support she gives her friends. Claire looks confused, then relaxes and smiles.
Part of my role in schools and colleges involves giving talks to staff about how they can help young people in their care. These teachers and support workers are dedicated to the pastoral side of their work, but often feel nervous about how they exercise it. Something that comes up a lot in discussion is the question of experience. Adults often feel that they have plenty of experience to share 鈥� but can feel frustrated when young people reject it.
My job then is to help them think about what is happening here. Blos2 points out that during the latency period, before true adolescence begins, feelings of self-worth are obtained less from our parents and more from having our own achievements recognised by others. This shift is not always easy to聽manage, and occasional misjudgements can cause huge embarrassment to young people. The tendency for regression is high when they move away from the close family culture into unknown waters, but later on, 鈥榮ignificant ego activities such as perception, learning, memory and thinking become more firmly聽consolidated into the conflict-free sphere of the ego鈥�.2 In other words, our young people, through experience and observation, begin to acquire their own wisdom.
So when teachers attempt to pass on their wisdom, they often replicate a parental/societal transference that the young person is trying to challenge or escape. Our job is to maintain the developmental space and use our insights to explore directions and choices with our clients. This is a privilege of the therapeutic alliance that makes it markedly different from the directed-ness of school or home. If this space is not observed, the transference will assert itself as negative, creating a tendency towards acting out and resistance, but lacking the essential opportunity of working through. Of course, both we and our clients always run the risk of mutual rejection, and occasionally this is extremely therapeutically useful, provided the therapeutic alliance can be maintained聽鈥� but not so if the young person subsequently feels too ashamed or overwhelmed to continue, and so becomes unable to pursue the therapeutic alliance.
Most young people start with the internalisation of a good object. Not only do we depend on the caregiver for our physical needs, but he or she also safeguards our emotional wellbeing by processing bad feelings for us. Perhaps the later anger at parents is about loss and disillusionment 鈥� because parents can鈥檛 always make things better. So we need to remember that teenage anger expressed in our rooms is as much about loss of childhood as it is the perceived lack of freedom, voice, or respect from their early caregivers.
Tight family machines and the fall-out
Jaques3 refers to individuals as 鈥榗ogs鈥� who make up the family 鈥榤achine鈥�. I have also observed, when shaking the family tree, that in order to overcome the challenges of everyday life, a family machine can become so tight, so inflexible, that the wobbly 鈥榗og鈥� (my young client) has become the subject of unconscious blame from the rest of the family. The聽child鈥檚 reaction to this barely detectable disapproval is to introject it, along with the feelings of 鈥榖adness鈥� inherent in the developmental crisis itself. This unconscious desire of a family or organisation or, more recently, society, to 鈥榝ix鈥� a problem in its midst by 鈥榯ightening鈥� is partly characterised in the tendency聽to seek medical diagnoses and treatments for difficult adolescent behaviour. Adopting a medicalised approach provides instant relief by removing guilt.聽The subject can鈥檛 help their condition, the parents can鈥檛 be blamed and everyone goes home feeling better.聽
Sometimes, though, there are rewards for merely enduring the discomfort of adolescence, such as the concept expressed by Freud as 鈥榮elf-mastery鈥�.聽I wonder if, by attempting to ease our path with medical diagnoses and pathologies, we have actually made things harder to understand. In Freudian and Kleinian theory, 鈥榝ar from soothing the psyche or the self or dismissing the guilt as unfounded, the analyst seeks to make conscious its unconscious, real or imagined grounds鈥�.4 The trouble is that children聽who have not learned self-mastery become parents unable to tolerate the psychic upheavals in their own infant and adolescent children. Remember, that if adolescence is the re-enactment of infancy, the most potent opportunity of the primary caregiver is the provision of reassurance and developmental space. If this is lost, if the parent cannot bear and absorb the child鈥檚 cries, but interprets them as sharp and聽accusatory, the child cannot then model self-mastery.
It follows that teenagers who feel both invincible and abandoned 鈥� often characterised by self- alienation or a nihilistic outlook (think 鈥楨mo鈥� or anarchic tendencies) 鈥� are perhaps experiencing a reprise of the 鈥榯errible twos鈥�, trying to exercise their autonomy in the family while at the same time fearing abandonment. The self-consciousness of growing up, the stretching of familial bonds, when parental aspirations are swallowed up along with the limitless potential of childhood: this is the place where young people look for their own meaning, determined to find the truth of their existence.
So this is what I like to explore in my practice 鈥� the duality of adolescence and family. It鈥檚 a sliding, shape- shifting thing that moves quickly together and apart again, never quite resettling into what it was before. It鈥檚 both traumatic and beautiful to be part of. As you might imagine, I encounter many relationship 鈥榮tyles鈥櫬爓hen working with young people. It鈥檚 common to observe the reactive/preverbal communication between father and son, or the verbal/emotional bond of mother and daughter and, of course, all things in between.
Relationship templates from home
Relationship templates derive from family life, and may or may not work outside the family environment.聽Conflict and conflict resolution styles especially, are learned first in the home, often leaving little room for developing children to adapt and improvise. During adolescence, we begin to challenge our parents鈥� way of relating and try different approaches. These new approaches may be formulated from books, TV, movies and games, or time spent with friends in their family home. The observation and reformulation of established mores can bring a great feeling of relief for those who feel different from their own family 鈥� and which of us hasn鈥檛 had a profound feeling of difference and being grossly misunderstood in our teenage years? It鈥檚 not uncommon for younger teenagers to inhabit some form of adoption fantasy, hoping to be 鈥榬escued鈥� by idealised 鈥榬eal鈥� parents who will truly understand them. Here again, we can provide a space during therapy to compare and contrast realities, unconstrained by family values and loyalties.
Parents can feel terribly rejected by teenage tantrums and anger. So it鈥檚 important to promote the idea to our young clients that this is part of the teenager鈥檚 rejection of self being projected onto those closest to them. This new order of things is a聽disillusionment for both parties. It鈥檚 difficult to sit in the destruction zone as a parent and imagine all is well, and I often invoke Winnicott鈥檚 assertion that 鈥榥o one would claim the word 鈥渉ealth鈥� is synonymous with the word 鈥渆ase鈥濃�� as a welcome piece of wisdom to offer.1听Although we attribute a lot of power to peer pressure among teens, in any group 鈥� including school and family 鈥� there is pressure to fit in. This is the world that adults dwell in: timetables, meetings, work, planned holidays. Fitting things in is essential to daily functioning 鈥� if someone isn鈥檛 fitting in, it throws things off balance and causes insecurity in the group.
When teaching groups of trainee counsellors, I notice a tendency for the trainees wishing to work with children to stick with me and those wanting to work with adults to find another tutor to adopt. This interests me, because I know that an awful lot of the work I do with adults revolves around their own struggles with childhood and adolescence. Jaques3 points out that by the time their children reach adolescence, parents will usually be in a relatively stable period in their lives, which should make it easier to work through their children鈥檚 turbulent teens together. But I wonder if this doesn鈥檛 sometimes compound the 鈥榬ude awakening鈥� of parents who feel they had been getting things pretty much right.聽Jaques3 does, however, concede that parents going through emotional or relationship difficulties may experience teenage upheaval as the final straw, and in these circumstances the projection of unhappiness can make it feel like a perpetual cycle of blame, making it impossible to tell which cause and what effect belongs to whom.
There are, of course, parents (of our young clients) who themselves failed to negotiate adolescence successfully, and we need to watch out for and recognise this. Sometimes they were deprived of the freedom that their own children seem to enjoy, and they want to 鈥榡oin in鈥� on the fun in some way. But what do you do to rebel as a teenager if your parents want to be like you? Alternatively, parents who feel they didn鈥檛 make the most of their education might decide聽to set impossible standards for their children as a way of repairing their own past mistakes. But adolescents鈥� capacity to deal with life challenges depends on their inner resources, and these develop from earlier relationships with caregivers and need to have been healthy, which is why we shake the tree and see聽what falls.
However, sometimes, an older or more distanced family member can 鈥榙raw the heat鈥� from those parents who are fraught with arguments that go nowhere and sap energy from family life. I鈥檝e frequently heard about grandparents providing a safe haven for my adolescent clients. The vital ingredients in this healing relationship seem to be time and non-judgment. It can also be, if introduced subtly, a place where adolescents find out from someone who was there聽at the time that their parents were also difficult teenagers. Rodriguez5 observes that in times of family upheaval or conflict, where extended family members are unavailable in some way, the therapist, too, can represent a stronger, safer object than their parents.
The upshot of shaking the family tree is this: that although it鈥檚 perhaps instinctive to collude to some extent with the 鈥榤isunderstood鈥� adolescent, however much we wish to respond to them as individuals, we cannot escape the fact (and neither can they) that they are a product of their family聽and environment. Using what we learn about the therapeutic alliance in family therapy can throw up some interesting pointers. We can involve parents to some extent, and this can be helpful in alleviating splitting behaviour in parents and children alike. And moving from thinking about a 鈥榩roblem child鈥� towards an understanding that the whole family is facing change can be extremely useful in addressing the reciprocal anger, fear and disappointment we encounter in our young clients.
Laura McDonald MSt is a psychodynamic psychotherapist, consultant, lecturer and supervisor working with a range of educational organisations.聽This article was inspired by her interest in adolescent issues and the role of school counsellors.
References
1 Winnicott DW. The child, the family and the outside world. London: Tavistock Publications; 1964.聽
2 Blos P. On adolescence. London: Collier Macmillan; 1962.
3 Jaques P. Understanding children鈥檚 problems. London: Unwin; 1987.
4 Carveth DL. The unconscious need for punishment: expression or evasion of the sense of聽guilt. Psychoanalytic Studies 2001; 3(1): 9鈥�21.聽
5 Rodriguez de la Sierra L. Working with addicts in adolescence. In: Wise I (ed). Adolescence. London: Karnac; 2004 (pp87鈥�107).