Psychotherapies focused on psychodynamics (the understanding of the origin of symptoms and psychopathological patterns) assume that emotional blocks are defense mechanisms, which work to protect the individual against threatening feelings that resemble a conflicting situation from the past. Unresolved conflicts generate anguish, and, if anguish generated by these conflicts is not elaborated, it will be discharged as symptoms. Although symptoms cause considerable harm to mental health and social life- embarrassment, as well as constraints and limitations- they are, in fact, a psychic attempt to achieve a balance, and they act as a “commitment solution” between the urge for energy discharge and the need for preserving psychic integrity. These symptoms are triggered when a situation/memory echoes a particular memory associated with a trauma or an inhibitory atmosphere from the past, which can prevent them from arising. In view of this, a psychotherapist’s job is to investigate the original conflicts that are brought about in conflicting situations at the present. Once the original conflict is accessed and worked out, the defense mechanism associated with it ceases, and the conflict-related memory is unblocked. It also allows us to access the identity model, which is, at times, compromised. The therapists’ job will be to help patients develop a strong/balanced Ego; an ego that goes side by side with common sense/reasoning, and is able to make genuine life choices and take responsibility for them. It is not a psychotherapist’s job to give/show patients their direction in life. This kind of approach would be negative in that it could lead patients to mirror their therapists’ concepts, moral values or ideas, which might not necessarily be the same as their patients’. An integrated Ego assumes who they are, admits their failures, integrates their inconsistences and, consequently, grows emotionally. The psychotherapists’ role is to offer the best conditions (welcoming, listening, theory and strategies) for the patients to be well succeeded in their process. In teenagers’ clinical practice, on the other hand, the psychotherapists’ common sense is paramount. Once it is true that pre-adolescents, initially, are introspective (due to the huge cenesthetical change in course in their bodies), they are also full of sexual energy that, by the time they reach adolescence, is prone to be discharged in social life. They want to go to life, discover and belong. Whilst in adults’ psychotherapy we work with family internalized conflicts, teenagers are still developing their sexual identities. It means that adolescents’ psychotherapy must include the work with their families and their psychodynamics. Therefore, the decision whether to include adolescents’ family in the process must be evaluated in each case, since each one has a singular psychodynamic. In general, adolescents’ psychotherapy is focused on relational conflicts, with some use of appropriate techniques for this stage, such as: role taking, role reversion, family/friends atoms and, also, body techniques, which enable them develop self-contention, in cases of anxiety crisis, for instance. In a nutshell, as psychotherapists, our role is to help teenagers find (in case of hidden conflicts) and develop their identities. In order to do so, we should understand their fantasies, help them express all sorts of contents, especially the ones that may sound morally reprehensible. This way, we will help them overcome the boundary between fantasy and reality and also develop a good common sense/reasoning, crucial for mental health and genuine life choices.
The End
Commentaires