The Myth of the Invulnerable Self of Adolescence

Contemporary psychoanalysis is turning avid attention to the interconnections between culture and psyche. In moving away from the locus of the individual, psychoanalytic theorists are beginning to unravel the cultural constructions of psychoanalytic theory. The relationship of psychoanalysis to science, particularly to the culture of scientific positivism, has become a tense debate (Haynal, 1993; Robinson, 1993), while the cultural biases embodied by psychoanalytic theories (e.g., Roland, 1989), and the notion that psychoanalytic constructs can be viewed as metaphors for sociocultural conditions (Lombardi, 1994), are opening up as areas of exploration. The notion of “self” is becoming a notion of “self-in-context.”

Classical psychoanalysis views culture as an extension of intrapsychic dynamics and sees the origins of social construction as residing in intrapsychic conflict. Neo-Freudian models, which accentuate sociocultural factors, conceive of the relationship between the sociocultural and the environmental as parallel or as organized around adaptation. Relational theory has focused on human relatedness, paying limited attention to humankind's relatedness with the other facets of the environmental surround. In emphasizing internal and interpersonal realms of engagement, the body of psychoanalytic thought has collapsed the sociocultural dimension of experience into intrapsychic and interpersonal realms. This path has led to an understanding of the sociocultural only as intrapsychically determined or