|
||
|
||
|
To schedule a teaching event just two weeks before the Christmas break is brave enough, especially when the theme is a broad one of general psychoanalytic theory rather than a more fashionable area of special interest. For my part I was thick with cold and pale with tiredness and very nearly left a wan apology for my absence on Leslie’s answerphone. As the day unfolded I became very glad I didn’t.
The Centre for Emotional Development was founded in 2006 by Dr. Leslie Ironside and, among other activities, organises a programme of training events on issues related to children’s mental health. The study day was neatly quartered into four stages most would recognise – infancy, latency, adolescence and adulthood with the key tasks of each as the backdrop to the clinical vignettes, poems and passages of fiction which Margot brought forward to illustrate them. Beginning at the beginning Margot charted the ordinary progress of an infant’s state of mind using a memorable quote from her favorite ‘Middlemarch’ to describe the newborn’s paranoid schizoid orientation as being towards ‘the world as an udder to feed the supreme being’ and Bion’s idea that a later depressive state would include the achievement of ‘being continent of one’s own infantile emotions’. I have found this particular way of describing the infant’s development very helpful in thinking about my own work with a group of teenage bullies who react to any disappointment with aggression and resolutely resist taking responsibility for their behaviour. In speaking to the developmental tasks of latency Margot quickly dispelled the myth that it is a time of dormancy with less psychological significance than what comes before or aft, citing Winnicott as the author of the idea that the task of the latency child is nothing less than that of ‘achieving sanity’. The latency child has the task of resolving the conflict between his or her infantile urges and the requirements of social life, and of deflecting sexual and aggressive energy whilst maintaining the growth of the personality. Margot illustrated this key internal dilemma by reading in entirety a poem about a child’s first day at school, which showed the newest pupil’s urge to explore her own interest versus her desire to conform and do as she was told. Professionals and parents are often anxious about the effect of adolescence, fearing that the inevitable florescence of sexuality and independence are full of destructive possibilities. However Margot began by emphasizing the importance of not allowing our anxieties to cloud the fact that this stage is also an opportunity for young people to revisit elements of development that got stuck first time around, a chance to make good early deficits. Perhaps this optimism about adolescents’ potential may account for Margot’s particular attraction to and expertise in working with this age-group. Margot charted the move from an early adolescent flight to group life to a late adolescent capacity to leave the group and forge a sexual relationship with just one other. She illustrated contrasting group life by reference to two experiences of a psychotherapist going to the clinic waiting room to meet teenage girls who had come for first appointments: a helpful group had rallied together to manage to physically get the patient across town to the clinic, whilst a gang-like group faced the therapist with the threat that either they all come or the (unidentified) patient would not attend at all! It seems likely that any of us listening to a lecture on adulthood might find ourselves responding in large part with internal comparisons, checking off whether or not we could consider ourselves to have arrived in the terms being described. It was a relief therefore (to at least one listener!) to hear Margot’s assertion as she began in on ‘adulthood’ that it is her belief that none of us ever arrive but must expect to find ourselves in and out of varying states of integration throughout our lives. Following a comment from the audience about the present primacy of activity over thoughtfulness in our public services, Margot drew an interesting distinction between a parent/professional servicing their child/client and a parent/professional serving their child/client. In a servicing culture, there is an attempt to take care of needs by doing things, whereas in a serving culture the responsive and receptive capacities of the provider are key and needs are taken care of by thinking. Each section was structured to allow time for discussion and, perhaps unexpectedly, given the richness of the teaching, the group became increasingly self-revelatory as the day progressed. By the end of the day the tenor of the audience participation was as much the sharing of personal experience as theoretical enquiry or professional dilemma. Stimulated by Margot’s description of the universal struggle towards adulthood we heard from amongst ourselves about a girl who had refused to speak at school, a teenager’s humiliation at being caught scrumping fruit, a mid-life crisis as an elderly parent slid into dementia. It seems that the day mirrored in process as much as in content Margot’s framing of her central theme that continued psychological development through life involves at its heart the move from learning about things to learning from experience. When I returned to work after the Christmas break a small patient of mine told me that she had seen me walking across a road ‘looking very lively and friendly’ on what must have been my return from the study day. Perhaps my demeanor seemed to her in great contrast to the therapist she has come to know in the consulting room - or perhaps she had accurately sensed the glow of stimulation and good company with which the day’s teaching had charged me. I am very pleased I never made that call. |
||
