Adolescent During the War, Raising an Adolescent Today

It is no secret that the adolescent crisis or search for identity can be a difficult time for both the adolescent and the parents. How does having parents who were adolescents during the war colour this picture?

The changing parent-child relationship in adolescence

Within classical psychoanalytic theories, adolescence has been conceptualized as a time of emotional turbulence during which strong drives confront a weak ego, a time when the adolescent learns to manage the tension between primitivization/differentiation and regressive/progressive positions (Blos, 1967). Erikson (1956) discussed another objective of adolescence, identity formation, and argued that self-identity is reached when all the experiences of temporary self-diffusion, caused by the regression that occurred during that period, are successfully contained and integrated. To make this possible, the roles in the family, whether the adolescent’s or other family members’, need to be realigned in order to match the new goals being set by the adolescent in order to surpass the disequilibrium that characterizes this transition phase.

Scott and his colleagues (2011) suggested that a sensitive mother will acknowledge the separation process occurring in adolescence and modify her responses to the adolescent according to his/her changing needs and striving for autonomy. The increasingly goal-corrected nature of the relationship helps the adolescent become less reliant and dependent on his/her parents (Bowlby, 1973). Kobak and Madsen (2008) added that open lines of communication between a parent and an adolescent are of main importance during this stage of life as a parent’s hostile or unexplained reaction to a child’s misbehavior could be perceived as a rejection or a threat to caregiver’s availability.

Given the extensive changes during adolescence, many psychoeducation support programs and therapeutic interventions have been designed to provide guidance, not only to the adolescent but also to give some tips to parents as to how to reflect healthily upon the changes their children are going through.

Adolescent during the war, parent of an adolescent today

However, how could this be affected by the trauma of war? In some countries, parents of today’s adolescents were the young adults of a civil war which lasted, in some instances, for more than a decade. This poses some questions as to how these experiences might have affected parents’ attachment relationships with their children, their capacity to mentalize, and if so, what has been the impact on adolescents’ experience of identity search.

Echoing Fraiberg’s (1975) ideas that “in every nursery there are ghosts” (p. 387), intruders of the past affect the parent-child relationship from birth through to adulthood. Fonagy et al. (1997) defined parental mentalizing as the ability to attribute feelings, thoughts and desires underlying one’s own and the child’s behaviors as well as to hold him and his mental states in mind in a non-defensive way in order to allow him to discover his internal world through the parent’s representation of it. This idea echoes Winnicott’s notion of the infant looking into the mother’s eyes to see and validate himself as an intentional being with his own thoughts, beliefs and feelings.

Parents with distorted mentalizing skills were found to be unable to contain the children’s negative and stressful affects because their reactions to the child depended on inferences they made based on unresolved issues within their past. It was suggested that these were then projected onto their children, which could have led to low socio-cognitive reasoning skills and psychological adjustment in the children (Grienenberger et al., 2005; Sharp et al., 2006). Given that Blos (1967) compared adolescence to a phase of second de-individuation, it can be argued that parental mentalizing plays a crucial role during adolescence, in helping the adolescent find his true self.

Can we say that adolescents of the war have worked through these ghosts, especially today as parents? This has been translated through my work with parents and adolescents as I tend to repeatedly hear parents say “we have lived through the war, I am sure my son can overcome this low mood he has! He has all he asks for and still, he is depressed”. Or others tend to diminish the impact anxiety might have on their adolescent girls, trying to fit in with peers, regarding it as a phase and dismissing the potential help of a mental health professional, as, to them, “we managed to overcome this despite the war, I am sure she will do it, she is just spoiled.”

Sometimes, parents provide too much independence to their adolescents, thinking they are giving their children what they did not get because they grew up during the war. However, is this making these adolescents grow up more quickly, but remaining emotionally immature? How does this contradiction affect the adolescent’s ambivalence during this stage of development? Or else, can it be that parents are putting too much pressure on their adolescents to reach the goals they were unable to get to?

Where does culture fit in?

The answer to these questions becomes much more difficult in countries where psychology and seeking support from mental health professionals are still taboo with little access to or trust in the field. It is also crucial to take into account the effects of culture on parents’ understanding of “good” parenting practices and “healthy” attachment styles. As recently emphasized in the second edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-2), clinicians cannot assess or treat adolescents without considering their caregiving system and social worlds, carefully considering whether and how to include parents (Malone, Piacentini & Speranza, 2018).

In some Arab Middle Eastern cultures, parents tend to be very present and involved in the adolescent’s life, which, if seen from a Western eye, could be perceived as enmeshed or intrusive. In these cultures, parents tend to think in terms of “we” to characterize the adolescent rather than thinking in terms of “my adolescent and I”. Adding the “ghost in the nursery” theory to the equation could lead to an unconscious projection of unfulfilled wishes onto the adolescent, making it harder for him/her to develop a true self. This is in line with Slade’s hypothesis that non-mentalizing parents tend to mirror a faulty image to the child, coloured by their own distorted representations and mental functioning within their insecure attachment. This, in turn, leads to the construction of a false sense of self in the child, who is not seen for whom he is. In enmeshed cultures, it can thus become more difficult to differentiate between the collectivistic family’s needs and the individual adolescent’s needs, especially in light of the globalization and value shifts.

Working with adolescents and their parents has led to me to question the blind application of attachment and mentalization in these cultures. This has pushed me to consider all the above factors in forming a more complete picture, leading to a smoother approach towards reflecting the parents, the adolescent and their relationship, as well as enriching my capacity to keep them separately as well as collectively in mind through the second individuation the adolescent, but possibly his parents too, are going through.

I am aware that this short piece of writing poses more questions than answers; however, I hope it will encourage scholars to consider and adopt these crucial theories from a more cultural perspective, focusing on less developed countries, culturally varied based on socio-economic status, Western influences, conceptualization of parenting and the parent-adolescent relationship.

Dr. Pia Tohme Khalaf has graduated with a Ph.D. from University College London, investigating parental mentalizing capacities with regards to their adolescent identical twins and its effects on attachment security. She is also trained in the Approach to Parenting Teenagers from the Open Door Young People’s consultation services and in Mentalization-Based Therapy for Adolescents, as well as its application in a school setting, from the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. Dr. Tohme Khalaf currently works with children, adolescents and their parents in private practice, based on attachment and mentalization principles and teaches on a part-time basis at the Lebanese American University. She also consults at the Association of Justice and Mercy, working with prisoners and their families, as part of an interdisciplinary approach towards their social reinsertion. Her main research interests focus on the cross-cultural application of the construct of attachment in Lebanon, as well as the role played by mentalization in our culture, in promoting healthy development from infancy through to adolescence.

Dr. Pia Tohme Khalaf

Part-Time Psychology Instructor, LAU

Mentalization-Based Therapist for Adolescents,

NGO Consultant, AJEM Rabieh Shelter

pia.tohme@lau.edu.lb

00 961 3 863 861

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