Presenter: Jon Blend
Description:
Adolescent anger
In adolescence, anger is associated with particular functional aspects (McConville, 1995). It protects young teenagers who lack the capacity to reconcile contradictory attitudes and beliefs, which may otherwise leave them feeling overwhelmed. This occurs during a time of much vulnerability, while the massive project of rewiring neural pathways takes place within teenage brains. To avoid implosion under the strain, young adolescents tend to skew their version of reality to support their fragile selves. Through projecting inner conflicts onto the wider field of family, friends, or community, troublesome internal conflicts are kept at bay.
Adolescent anger enables proto separation at the disembedding stage
The behavior of young adolescents aims to create a boundary between them and adults; teenagers may provoke fights with adults to feel powerful while secretly feeling insecure. Anger and projection serve to keep guilt and shame at bay – the developing teenage brain as yet cannot handle personal inconsistency and isn’t ready to respond empathically. Instead, the youngster first needs to attend to their own needs despite the risk of seeming selfish. Some psychologists, such as Michael Gurian, question the imperative for teenage rebellion. Many psychotherapists, however, including McConville, Oaklander, and Winnicott, consider such rebellion a necessary part of the process of growth and development. Battles fought at the boundary between self and other keep the pressure off the still fragile, internal self, though the teenager’s experience of this divide, especially in the middle “interiority” stage, can also be painful and lonely.
Other functional aspects of anger in adolescence
Anger also provides a sense of personal solidity for adolescents while supplying propulsion for them to “blast off” on their own. This allows an experience of brief separation from parents while showing peers and others that they are okay. Otherwise, adolescents risk remaining confluent with their parents and unable to leave the family. Anger becomes a creative adjustment, driving adolescence forward as the young person begins to consolidate their renewed self (ibid). This process “shakes up the herd” and can be found variously across the animal kingdom.
During this presentation:
We will examine some of the arts-led media that adolescents turn to for support during this amazing period of accelerated growth and change. These include iconic songs across eras, poetry writing, fashion, and “the language of cool.” How might these support a process of development? Clinical vignettes from therapy illustrate moments of adolescent “life in the fast lane” as well as relational experiences of “doldrums.” Quests for identity, autonomy, morality, and intimacy form part of this heady journey – how does anger expression and containment encourage or impede our completion of gestalts – our flow?
Working in breakout rooms, participants may wish to explore present awareness by assembling their own cut-and-paste lyric or poem using phrases gathered from newspapers or magazines – a quirky method for inspiration during writer’s block adopted by Bowie, Dylan, Lennon, Radiohead, and Swift.
Alternatively, the group may wish to experiment with a simplified version of violinist Helen Bonny’s transformational Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) method, exploring with awareness emergent feelings, images, and memories while relaxing to carefully tailored musical extracts. How might this affect our acknowledgement of the ebb and flow of adolescent processes within us?
Biography:
Jon Blend, MA, is British, of Austro-Russian heritage. He is a UKCP and ECP registered Gestalt psychotherapist, child psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, musician, and Playback Theatre performer (www.londonplayback.com). He maintains a psychotherapy practice in London seeing adults, children, and supervisees.
Jon is a faculty member of the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education and an approved trainer with the Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation. Since 2002, he has taught the Oaklander model of projective arts therapy to psychotherapists and other professionals. His career in adult and child mental health began 40 years ago, as a social worker in various hospital and community-based settings.
Jon has delivered Gestalt training workshops and presentations to institutes and organizations in Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Poland, Romania, the USA, and the UK. His interests include animal-assisted therapies, interfaith working, and transcultural and intergenerational dialogue. For nine articles and training information, visit https://www.gacp.co.uk.
