Adolescence and Societies

Two of the developmental tasks required in order to make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood involve achieving final independence from the regressive pull to a lost idealized state of dependency and the abandonment of persistent fantasies of childhood omnipotence, often expressed through the concept of omnipotentiality.

Allow some brief elaboration, with the customary disclaimers; there are many ways to become a fully functioning adult; what I am describing is just an aspect of the typical pathway: 

Psychological development occurs in the psychic tension between wishes to grow up (and become an adult, more powerful, more beautiful, etc) and the regressive pull back to a fantasied state of dependency where all one's needs are satisfied and life is blissful (the fantasy of childhood union with the all powerful early mother.)  In order to become a fully functioning adult you must assume responsibility for yourself, and ultimately for others who are (in reality) dependent on you, your children.  Part of the task involves abandoning your fantasies that someone else will always be there to take care of you.  These fantasies are most often expressed in adolescence and adulthood derivative form as Utopian ideologies in which a particular ideology will usher in the desired Utopia.  For example, the ideal of "cradle to grave" socialism upon which the socialism-lite of Europe depends fails in large part  because it denies its connection to fantasy and such fantasies can never be achieved or approached in reality.  Human nature and the vicissitudes of reality preclude Utopia, as much as we may wish to deny that inconvenient fact.

At the same time as you must give up your fantasy of eternal gratification from the societal breast, one must also more clearly engage and tolerate the limitations of reality.  Adolescents often inhabit a state derived from the early infantile omnipotence, a state in which the infant believes that his behavior creates his reality; eg, he cries and is nurtured, therefore the crying caused the nurturing.  In the adolescent such omnipotent fantasies are expressed in two ways,

as omnipotentiality, the belief that he is capable of doing whatever he desires and as the more disguised determination that if the world is arranged poorly one can ignore reality and behave as if it is arranged according to one's specifications.  (I described this in some depth in The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection.) 

Omnipotentiality refers to the belief, common in childhood and adolescence, that one can become whatever one wants to become, regardless of realistic limitations.  By late adolescence the child, in the face of his realistic limitations, must cede his most cherished fantasies.  It is a loss and often a source of depression to realize that one's dreams, of becoming a superhero or the Centerfielder for the Yankees or a Nobel prize winning physicist, are unlikely to come to fruition.  Obviously, some few lucky and talented individuals will achieve the greatest success (though so far becoming a superhero appears beyond our reach) but most, even with talent and drive, will fall short of the heights.  Further, and of even more significance, the adolescent must give up the idea that he can be all the things he desires, eg, the Centerfielder for the Yankees AND a Nobel prize winning physicist.  Even Michael Jordan was unable to excel at two sports.

This topic is germane for understanding the current state of affairs in Gaza and the predictable responses to it.

The outlines of the situation are clear.

Hamas has as its core belief the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews; it is in their charter and they act upon this belief at every opportunity.  Once the barely upheld truce ended, Hamas began to fire an increased number of rockets into Israel, with ever increasing range, directed at Israeli civilians.  This was intolerable to Israel, as it would be to any nation, and they responded with attacks and an invasion designed to destroy Hamas's effectiveness for as long a time as possible.  The Arab Street, that fabled assemblage of angry young men and occasional enraged women which claims to speak for the Ummah, began their street theater, though less robustly than in previous Arab-Israeli engagements; the left leaning Academy and Media predictably assailed Israel for disproportionality (an accusation that fails to rise to the level of the risible); the stout hearted (that is sarcasm) spokesmen of the international community raced to condemn Israel (though with somewhat less vigor than in the past); the various governments and agencies of the EU rushed forward their proposals for truces between the parties without making any effort to make any moral differentiations (except in their more febrile moments to accuse Israel of the kinds of crimes in which their parents and grandparents were complicit in the last century.)  This was, and is, business as usual for the Israelis and the Palestinians but it is worth examining the motives, conscious and unconscious, of the various participants.

Time pressures will force me to truncate this post but tomorrow I would like to further examine what Hamas's behavior tells us about the Palestinians.  I will follow with a post exploring the behavior of the left in the Media and Academy (we could add the arts as well, if Annie Lennox and Sean Penn are representative) which in large measure supports the Palestinians.  Further, I will suggest some of the ways in which the international community perpetuates the conflict and how the United States might be able to use its influence in the service of the necessary developmental advances which might lead to some amelioration of the plight of the combatants on both sides.