Discussion of “Adolescent Writings”

The paper, “Adolescent Writings and Idealized Image,” provides both clinical and theoretical formulations whose implications for development possess considerable importance to the extension of Horney theory. With the exception of occasional contributions by Bernard Zuger, Muriel Ivemy, Norman Kelman, Elizabeth Kilpatrick, Martin Symmonds, and, of course those observations contributed by Horney, the area of development remains, to this day, relatively unexplored within the Horney paradigm. Since human beings occur not only as adults, but as adolescents, children, and infants as well, this lacunae in Horney theory invites the general criticism, often leveled by adherents to other schools of psychoanalysis, of an inherent incompleteness in Horney theory. For these reasons, I welcome the contribution by Dr. Tershakovec not only for its content, but also its intent.

In his paper, Dr. Tershakovec suggests that the formation of the idealized image occurs with the consolidation of formal operational thinking during the period of middle and late adolescence. This is a fortuitous observation inasmuch as cognitive developmental theorists, and Piaget in particular, have concerned themselves with the ramifications of formal operational thinking in the organization of adolescent preoccupations and behavior.

In the remarks that follow, I will draw upon the work of Jean Piaget, whose current impact upon developmental psychology and psychology in general cannot be overestimated. In contrast to psychoanalytic theories of development that are largely retrospective and reconstructive, developmental psychological theories are based primarily upon contemporaneous observation or experiment. Since reconstructive analyses are an effort to represent what was once contemporaneous, contemporaneous observation is clearly a valuable adjunct to psychoanalytic theory, and, as we will see, the observations of cognitive developmental psychology are highly congruent with Horney theory.

In Piaget's theor