Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

March 7, 1961. ADOLESCENT MOODS AND THE REMODELING OF PSYCHIC STRUCTURES IN ADOLESCENCE. Edith Jacobson, M.D.

In this Brill Memorial lecture, Dr. Jacobson recalled statements by Anna Freud, Berta Bornstein, and Nathan Root comparing the nature of the resistance and mood swings of the adolescent to that encountered in patients during periods of mourning. The author related this to the adolescent's struggle in disengaging himself from his parents and embarking on a search for new objects. During this period he must develop new sexual attitudes, new social relations, new values, and firmer sublimations, necessitating structural and economic transformations.

These renewed instinctual conflicts cause a return to infantile positions, alternating with propulsion to new and more adult levels. Helene Deutsch has described this phenomenon as a 'clash' between progressive and regressive forces. In contrast to the infantile Oedipal conflict, the adolescent not only must finally relinquish Oedipal strivings but also the affectionate ties to the parents must be sufficiently loosened to allow new object choices. The superego, which in childhood maintained the incest taboos, must continue this function of prohibition and at the same time permit the sexual life of the adult to emerge. Some restrictive identifications with the parents are diminished, while other fundamental identifications remain or become even more fully integrated. These changes are accomplished by transient periods of narcissistic retreat, easily reversible, and followed by a renewed process of propulsion. The new identifications are with the parents as sexually active persons. This requires changes in ego ideal and superego which must tolerate the sexual liberation while maintaining the incest barrier. The narcissistic regression, with the investment of the ego, leads finally to the development of new and more mature ego functions. During this period there is often a revival of Oedipal or preoedipal st