Psychoanalysis uses the concept of «adult», but does not pretend to make people adults. He is content to allow a person to meet himself and be what… who he can be.
“After all, it cost us a lot of work to get old, but not to grow up, getting old,” the Belgian poet and singer Jacques Brel puts these words into the mouth of “old lovers”.
The status of an adult seems unenviable to them. Only by avoiding adulthood, gray-haired already in love manages to maintain the strength and fullness of feelings. Such a bleak notion of adulthood as synonymous with the abandonment of passions and the fading of feelings is shared by many adolescents. They do not hesitate to throw in the face of their parents: “You are stagnant, you have no movement, no life! You live out of habit, your flawed love suits you. What is it, youthful romance? Not only. These ardent believers in life on the move are not entirely wrong. A teenager is one who has “grown up”, but continues to grow, and an adult is one who has already “grown up”, has grown up, has reached the end of the path called “growing up”.
From attraction to reality
But where did you get? This is where the problems begin. After all, the recognition that development has ended implies that there are criteria for this completion that apply to any of us, and to the question «What is an adult?» there is an exact answer. “This is true when it comes to the body, since all “human cubs” start walking at about the same age, the first teeth appear at about the same age, and so on,” notes sexologist Yevgeny Kashchenko. “As far as intellectual, emotional, sexual development is concerned, the spread, as you know, is greater.”
And really, who among us will dare to seriously assert that he is already an adult? We know, for example, outstanding professionals who behave like foolish babies in their personal lives. Yes, and the human mind is too complex and mobile for us to expect to measure it or drive it into the framework of some “levels”.
What is the position of psychoanalysis? “Often a person cannot realize his desires, it is difficult for him to open up emotionally, enjoy relationships, work and creativity, as he is interfered with by unconscious scenarios that he obsessively reproduces,” explains psychoanalytic psychotherapist Svetlana Fedorova. – Psychoanalysis is the path to a more mature “I”, capable of pulling a person out of an endless series of acting out his conflicts coming from childhood. The possibility of free association creates a space for meeting and dialogue with your unconscious. With the help of the analyst’s interpretations and his own fantasies and reasoning, a person does a very important inner work. He does not literally become an «adult man», but he certainly approaches himself.
In the theory of psychoanalysis, the concept of «adult» can be considered from two angles. Freud calls «adult genital sexuality» the final state of a person’s sexual development*. This sexuality is formed from puberty, from the moment when «separate drives», that is, waves of libido emanating from different «erogenous zones», begin to organize «under the dominance of the genital». The concept of «adult» in Freud’s theory can also be derived based, for example, on the «pleasure principle» and the «reality principle». “A child, growing up, gradually recognizes and accepts the demands of reality (if he is brought up), says psychoanalyst Claude Halmos. “He can gradually give up being guided only by pleasure, and this, of course, indicates an evolution towards maturity.”
Does «adulthood» not exist?
Does it follow that analytic theory regards adulthood as a (valuable) state that any healthy person strives to achieve? This would be a mistake, Yevgeny Kashchenko believes: “The unconscious does not know time. We are all doomed — whatever our age — to have the “child within us” act for us. Doomed to engage with «others» from our adult lives — lovers, mistresses, friends, bosses — in a relationship that is like two drops of water similar to those that we had before with our father, mother, brothers and sisters.
A PERSON DECIDES TO TAKE AN ANALYSIS BECAUSE IT HURTS TO LIVE. AND HE REALIZES PRETTY QUICKLY THAT IS SUFFERING BECAUSE OF HIS CHILDHOOD.
In addition, the concept of «adult» implies well-defined stages of development. “Yes, of course, the child passes from the oral stage to the anal one, but not one stage of mental development closes the door tightly for another,” Svetlana Fedorova reflects. – Adult sexuality is individual and unique, but it always retains the imprint of past sensations. The combination of different stages in it makes it richer and more multifaceted. The concept of «adult» also implies a certain norm: «It’s time to become an adult, my young friend!» “But psychoanalysis does not get along well with norms,” Claude Almos is sure. By emphasizing the complexity of personal history, he shows the futility of any notion of «normality.»
Finally, Freud discovered the «death drive» in us. “This is the force that encourages us to go back, to endlessly repeat those ways of existence (in relation to ourselves, to others, to the world) that we already know,” explains Svetlana Fedorova. – How to reconcile this constant craving for the past, for that nothingness from which we came, with the idea of ascending to the golden age of adulthood? Man is inherently afraid of uncertainty, fear of the aggressive feelings of others and his own, and there is always a temptation to return to the mother’s womb, where there is no separation, no conflict, where all needs are satisfied by themselves. But in essence, this is the rejection of one’s own «I» and mental death, and development is possible through conflicts.
Healing from Childhood Suffering
So can a course of psychoanalysis make a patient «adult»? The question is not easy. A person decides to undergo an analysis because it is «painful for him to live», and on the couch he quickly discovers that he suffers because of his childhood. But to be healed, there are different solutions. For some, analysis allows you to get out of submission to parental prescriptions. Such people discover for themselves the right to think differently than their parents, to have a life other than that of their parents, to do what their parents forbade them, and even to be equal to them («Before I could not be a father. My father was the only real father») . At the end of the journey, some manage to internally reconcile with parents from their childhood and, thanks to this, feel more “adult”. Others, on the contrary, use psychoanalysis to reclaim the childhood that was stolen from them. “They are re-mastering their body, which until now has remained clamped,” says Yevgeny Kashchenko. “They regain the ability to laugh, move, play, love and create, think about their lives in the future tense, make plans.” Yet psychoanalysis does not claim to make us adults. He is content to allow everyone to know who they are, and from there be who they are… who they can be. We stop running in place, break the circle of eternal repetitions and begin to urgently live this particular, our own and only life.
* Z. Freud «Essays on the Psychology of Sexuality» (Potpourri, 2010).
- Find out your inner age