Discussion of Arminda Aberastury, Mauricio Knobel, and Gela Rosenthal's Article, Mourning as a Way to Maturity: Thinking in Normal and Psychopathic Adolescents

I always find it interesting to read the experiences of colleagues working in other cultures. I wonder how comparable their observations will be to those which we make in our culture. I look forward to learning of behavior mechanisms which are not known to us or which may become obvious only in cultures different from ours. It is also possible that colleagues working in a different professional ambience may pursue different and original lines of investigation. In this paper I have found nothing which could not have been observed in New York City and nothing novel in clinical or theoretical approach. However, my disappointment at learning nothing new from the cultural differences was more than compensated for by my delight with the authors' original formulations, and by satisfaction that our theoretical views did not seem to be culture-bound.

The only problem that this cross-cultural communication might have caused is that created by what might be considered a clumsy use of the English language. This may seem ungracious to mention in view of the evident good will of the authors and their willingness to use a language which is foreign to them. However, it is not my purpose to find fault, but merely to note that the difficult rhetoric combined with an otherwise laudable conciseness make their concepts somewhat obscure.1

The authors have provided a schematic framework against which we can judge the degree of an adolescent's maturation. The adolescent, they say, typically has three tasks to complete: mourning for his infantile body; mourning for his infantile role; and mourning for the parents of his childhood. Dr. Aberastury, Dr. Knobel, and Dr. Rosenthal also try to show how the manifestations of the adolescent's failure to complete these tasks successfully can be explained as a consequence of a characteristic adolescent ego weakness, namely, a readiness to regress from thought to