Adolescence as a phenomenon of the field and affection as a vector of at-one-ment in the analytic relationship

Abstract

I believe that clinical work with adolescents provides extremely valuable contributions in the Field Theory area. The observation and care of adolescents has always made me think how growth is a painful process of separation from and rediscovery of the lost object in après-coup, how important it is for us analysts not to lose touch with our human gaze, and above all with the meaning of the affection that guides our clinical listening, especially when we are dealing with minors who are “hard to reach” (Joseph 1975). Therefore, I consider affection a genuine theoretical and technical prerequisite – I could say, a “parameter” – for emotionally contacting the adolescent in the symbolic and affective place where they happen to be: in other words, for fostering a unison. So, in this paper, I would like to try and set up a dialectic between the concepts of affection, unison (Bion 1962) and subjectivation in adolescence, understood as a field and group phenomenon.

Key words:

• adolescence
• affection
• unison
• field theory
• group
• co-individuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Translator’s note: an untranslatable pun is being made here on “tifo,” the disease typhus, and “fare il tifo,” to be a fan of, to root for, support.

2 Aliprandi, Pelanda, & Senise (1990), and more recently Goisis (2014), claims that those who work with adolescents know very well how important it is for the analyst to learn to oscillate emotionally within a narcissistic transference that the young person imposes on the relationship with the therapist because of their typical mode of functioning intrapsychically or relationally. We find Bolognini (2005) following the same line of research.

3 Gesuè (2015) reminds us that Freud warns against an affection full of “sentimentality.” The excess underlined by this term would thus refer to a defect of adult psychic functioning: that is, the adult’s defective ability to contain a quantity of early erotic investment in relation to the child. Gesuè goes further and interprets the “sentimental affection” to which Freud refers as the adults’ need to defend themselves against the anxiety that the relationship with the baby arouses in them. Personally, I believe that this “degeneration” of affection has to do with the adult/parental experience of a sort of “betrayal” by the adolescent of the original narcissistic pact between parents and children. That is, on becoming an adolescent, “His Majesty the Baby” (Freud, 1914), betrays the parent’s narcissistic expectations by claiming their own narcissistic spaces that are under construction, and for this very reason they are in need of an authentic affection.

4 Translator’s note: this is an allusion to the title of the Jack Nicholson film, which is known in Italy as Qualcosa è cambiato (Something has changed).

5 A page reference is unavailable as the Seminar is unpublished and the available photocopy is unpaginated.

6 Translator’s note: in the original Italian “uomo-sessualità” – “man-sexuality.”

7 Ogden (2019), personal communication by Monica Bomba.

8 “I dance on my own,” released in English-speaking countries as Stealing beauty.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angelo Antonio Moroni

Angelo Antonio Moroni is a psychologist and psychoanalyst based in Italy, and a full member of SPI-IPA. His work includes supervision of Italian and Swiss national health services and collaboration with public and private institutions dealing with adolescent psychiatry. He is a Founding Member of the Centro Psicoanalitico di Pavia (SPI). He has published several articles and has authored and edited six books. A particular mention to the book Psychoanalytic Diaries of the Covid-19 Pandemic, written with Pietro Roberto Goisis (Routledge, 2022).