I'm Ok, You're Ok by Thomas A. Harris

Author:Thomas A. Harris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781448108077
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-09-16T14:09:30.091814+00:00

10. P-A-C and Adolescents

* * *

If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.

– Voltaire

ONE DAY A sixteen-year-old member of one of my adolescent groups reported the following incident: ‘I was standing on the street corner and the light was red. My Parent said. “Don’t cross”, my Child said, “Go ahead anyway”, and while I was debating what to do the light turned green.’

The years of adolescence are like this. Teenagers are confronted with big and little decisions. Yet, often they seem to have to wait for circumstances to make their decisions for them, because they are not really free to decide for themselves. Their brain is nearing its prime development. Their body is mature. But legally and economically they are dependent, and their attempts at emancipated action are frequently undercut by the realization that they can’t really make their own decisions anyway, so what’s the use of making good decisions. They feel they may as well drift along through adolescence and wait for the light to turn green. The Adult does not develop under these circumstances. Suddenly when they are legally emancipated they feel adrift, they don’t know what they want to do, and many of them pass time hoping something will happen, someone will come along, somehow something will turn them on. Yet, at this point, one-fourth of their life has passed.

Because of external and internal pressures the transactions of the teenager frequently fall back into the old Child-Parent patterns. In adolescence the feelings of the Child replay in greatly amplified form as the hormones turn on and as the adolescent turns away from his parents as the principal source of stroking to his own age group for stroking of a new kind. The NOT OK tapes come on with increasing frequency, but the coping techniques learned in childhood to minimize the NOT OK now can be dangerous. The seductive cuteness of the little girl must now be brought under control to guard against new developments, both external and internal. The ‘mine is better’ boisterousness of the little boy must be modified in the name of manners as the adolescent learns the painful process of self-control. Communication has to be relearned and revised. The adolescent is pushed out on the stage with a new manuscript in his hands, which he has never read, and the lines don’t come off too well at first. He is like a plane shooting ahead at full speed, between converging cloud layers. Below, and rising fast, are the boiling clouds of sexual urges and the rebellious struggling for independence; above are the hovering and lowering clouds of parental anxiety and disapproval. He feels things are closing in, and he desperately looks for an opening.

The central difficulty is that he and his parents often are still working under the terms of the old Parent-Child contract. As much as he sees himself as a grownup, he still feels like a child. Parents may suggest what they believe to be a perfectly reasonable course of action and are frustrated, baffled, and hurt over his angry rebuttal, hooking their Child.

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