Mourning as a Way to Maturity: Thinking in Normal and Psychopathic Adolescents

We will attempt here to demonstrate that the working through of a mourning process is indispensable to therapeutic success in the analysis of adolescents (and adults), and to illustrate aspects of thinking in this process that can be observed in “normal” and in psychopathic adolescents.

Knobel (1962) says that “adolescence can be defined as a stage in life in which the individual tries to establish his adult identity on the basis of the early internalized parental object relationships and by testing the reality of his social environment. This is achieved through the available developing biophysical elements which tend to stabilize the personality on a genital level” (p. 72). The authors of this paper add to Knobel's definition that the establishment of the adult identity can only be achieved if the mourning for the infantile identity is worked through.1

Throughout, we refer to identity as a continuum, and to adolescence as that period of development in which the individual's identity acquires the characteristics preparatory to his ultimate adult identity. Also, we recognize the normal process of adolescence as implying a certain amount of psychopathic behavior, and

that the exaggerated intensity or persistence of such behavior is what nosologically constitutes psychopathy. Within this understanding of adolescence three fundamental kinds of mourning can be observed in adolescents: (1) mourning for the infantile body, (2) mourning for the infantile identity and role, (3) mourning for the childhood parents. Let us now see how this threefold mourning affects the adolescent's thinking.

The characteristic biological changes of adolescence force the individual t