Cultural Interferences with Listening to Adolescents: A Commentary

It is always a pleasure to read work in which either or both of the Novicks I have had a part. This paper is no exception. Inevitably, I find myself in mental dialogue with what is written. Again, this is no exception. This time, however, I actually have a venue for the expression of my reactions. I welcome the opportunity.

De Vito and the Novicks offer several challenges to the traditional psychoanalytic model of adolescence. They begin with the notion of adolescent turmoil that was first brought into the literature by G. Stanley Hall (1904), then expanded upon by Anna Freud (1958, 1969). They cite the Offer (1969, 1991) and Ostrov and Howard (1981) studies and the work of Esman (1990) in taking the position that normal adolescents do not necessarily experience turmoil, and that the adolescent condition is not intermediate between mental health and illness (as Anna Freud suggests). They then suggest that blurring distinctions between normality and pathology creates difficulties for clinicians in detecting interferences in development, and, ultimately, creates a pessimistic view for the possibilities of intensive psychoanalytic treatment of adolescents.

Theirs are points well taken. Calling a phase of the life cycle a “developmental disturbance,” as Anna Freud did in 1958 and 1969, certainly creates the impression that the many adolescents—indeed, those in the majority—who do not manifest turmoil are the ones who are aberrant, when, in fact, we know that they are not. Most youth proceed through the decade that we think of as adolescence without manifesting overt rebellion or turmoil. This should not, however, be mistaken as a statement on my part that I believe that most adolescents are no different from how they were in latency or early childhood. On the contrary, it is my belief and observation that puberty ushers in very distinct inner feelings for these young adolescents—feelings that often lead to differences in the way they interact in