Blaming and punishing instead of guiding and helping sexually active adolescents is an ages old victimising custom which lets parents, other caregivers, family and broader society off the hook. This custom contributes to the continuing denial of infantile and childhood sexuality which needs to be nurtured and protected rather than acted on and awakened too early by adult carers.

Toddlers and young children need appropriate information at all ages about sexual matters in order to develop into adolescents who start experimenting with relationships, so that they can become adults who lead healthy lives which are also sexually fulfilling. From young, children need careful and mindful assistance as they get to know their own bodies. Children also need to learn touching themselves in a sexual way is fine but needs to happen in private.

Apart from loving and thoughtful care by family, parents and other adult carers, children may view all forms of inappropriate touching or play by adults or other children with a healthy suspicion. All children need to be enabled to say no to such emotional or bodily intrusion from the moment that they can indicate their non-consent. Adult carers need to become much more attuned to babies’ healthy ability to say no when being passed on to hands that feel unsafe. Instead of extinguishing this response, they need to affirm it so it becomes entrenched.

Once children feel in control of their sexuality they can grow into adolescents who are informed about their experimentation and sexual choices. Informed and protected adolescents will in most instances be able to protect themselves against inappropriate advances from others or going too far against their will with a peer.

The father of modern day psychology, Sigmund Freud, evoked strong reactions in the 1900s when he revealed that children are sexual and need their adult carers to protect rather than prematurely awaken their sexuality. Despite many advances in the field of reproductive health since then and especially in the last 50 years, society’s denial of children’s sexuality is still broadly in place. Today parents still do not discuss sexual issues with their children. Nor do they give them information about puberty and adolescence and the tumultuous changes that will occur in their minds and bodies as they mature. Inappropriate sexual handling of babies and children, which can result in premature sexual activity in adolescents, still remains rife today because it is hidden.

Children’s open interest in sexuality changes and retreats into privacy when they enter primary school. At this stage, older children begin to prefer to stick to friendships with children of their own gender. At puberty boys and girls (who generally mature before boys of the same age) become curious about touching, feeling and kissing a girl or boy they are attracted to. Sometimes these encounters result in having sex, especially when children are not consciously aware of their growing sexual interest or when a culture of mutual consent is not inculcated. Very often young adolescents who become sexually active have been sexualised before when they were not ready to be sexually active. They battle to fight their very strong sexual urges to be sexually active partly because of the intensity of their physical impulse, also because they confuse physical attentions with love and care.

Instead of trying to understand why adolescents become sexually active prematurely society behaves punitively towards them, as if young people should have known better, as if their bodies do not belong to themselves and they therefore do not deserve to be informed about them, as if they should not repeat patterns laid down unconsciously by their parents and grandparents and the other generations that preceded them.

Many an adult woman can today still remember how the arrival of her first period was greeted with great suspicion, how it was equated with sexual activity. Yesterday’s adolescents at times also share how they were humiliated requesting contraception. It’s public knowledge that many adolescents die and are damaged in risky traditional initiation ceremonies. All of which point to the existence of punitive, even unconsciously murderous, practices that persist and hurt adolescents.

Instead of rigidifying the victimisation of adolescents into law society needs broad educational programmes for all adult carers of children and adolescents that can help them guide and protect their charges. These programmes also need to focus on individual psychology because we will not achieve the needed change if there is no examination of how individuals’ sexuality is shaped both consciously and unconsciously.

A focus on the psychology of the individual will also help foster a broad understanding of how sexual coercion and violence come about – that those who coerce and abuse also experienced coercion and abuse at some, often early, point in their lives and that they are perpetuating patterns that will be transmitted from one generation to the next. These patterns can only be changed if both victims and offenders are helped to understand how their behaviours came about.

We should all contribute to bring about a broad, multidisciplinary approach aimed at guiding, protecting and cherishing adolescent sexuality which ensures the survival of humankind.

Written by Vossie Goosen (clinical psychologist, SAPC member and former journalist and editor of publications in NGO’s.

Email: vossiem@mweb.co.za)

People these days, if they can afford it, are often more connected to their smart phones, i-pads, and laptops than they are to other living beings. While social networking sites like Facebook aim to connect people in cyberspace, they can actually leave us more physically alone and lonely. Social isolation often goes hand in hand with depression. People who are depressed are more likely to isolate themselves and being socially isolated can contribute towards depression.

Because the internet is so recent and it is constantly changing, we don’t yet know about its long-term impact on us as people. We have yet to discover how our total reliance on IT effects our mood, attention, concentration, thought patterns, ability to delay gratification, our style of communicating and our relationships with others.

Like anything else, the internet can be used for good and for bad. It has helped us to make great strides in education, health care and improving lives. It allows us to equip ourselves with knowledge that is empowering and beneficial in so many different ways. But it can also be used destructively to attack, deceive, steal and hurt others. Part of our adjustment to this new technological world is about learning how to avoid these dangers, in a similar way that we learn not to walk down dark alleyways at night.

We know for sure though that the internet, social networking sites and smart phones are not going to go away – they are only getting smarter, faster and more addictive. They can be good for mental health but they can also be bad for it. The challenge for us all is to use the internet to improve our lives, to learn, grow and stay connected to others in a meaningful way. But we do need to be aware of the dangers, and we should recognise when it’s time to unplug, disconnect from technology and reconnect with ourselves and others.

What kind of impact has the internet had on your mental health?

Written by Jenny Perkel (clinical psychologist, SAPC member). Visit www.jennyperkel.com, www.childreninmind.co.za, www.babiesinmind.co.za, www.twitter.com/jennyperkel or email: jenny@perkel.co.za

Freud placed great emphasis on people becoming consciously aware of previously repressed material during psychoanalysis. Remembering repressed memories or becoming mindful of unconscious material was a central component of Freud’s therapeutic approach[i]. This sentiment was echoed by Carl Jung in stressing the importance of making that which was unconscious conscious in psychotherapy. In psychoanalytic therapy today exploring and understanding a patient’s unconscious dynamics via free association, dreams and the transference forms an integral part of everyday practice. Yet numerous patients struggle with this specific task in therapy. It is simply too painful for some and they retreat, many terminating therapy at this point. Unable or unwilling to acknowledge and deal with their painful psychic realities. I remember facing certain realities about myself in my own therapy and how painful that process was. The journey of seeking out those unconscious gods that hold sway over our lives is one of peril. Jung, one of the great explorers of the unconscious issues the following warning to those who seek knowledge about the self: “There is no coming to consciousness without pain”[ii]. As I invite patients on a daily basis to explore and confront their shadow, I am many times reminded of the mythic Norse tale of King Gylfe and his journey towards Asgard, the home of the gods.

A great many hundreds of years after the creation of the world, there ruled a wise king whose name was Gylfe. He was a seeker after wisdom and finding that no man could answer the questions which he was continually asking himself, Gylfe made the long journey to Asgard, thinking to learn the secrets of the gods. The gods have often visited men, but men have rarely visited the gods, and the King’s coming to Asgard was the beginning of a new wisdom among men. No sooner did he enter the home of the gods than he found himself in a great hall. Then Odin, spoke in a deep and wonderful tone and asked why he had come there? He replied boldly that he wanted to find a wise man if there were one. Then Odin answered him in words which were so full of meaning that he did not understand them until long afterwards: “You shall not go from this place unharmed unless you go wiser than you came.” It is dangerous to seek the gods, unless we profit by what they tell us; for it is better to be ignorant than to possess knowledge and not live by it.[iii]

In seeking out our unconscious gods we need to confront unsettling and at times painful memories, thoughts and feelings. Odin’s cautionary warning is a stark reminder to all of us involved in helping people along this journey. Maybe in the future psychotherapists should have Odin’s warning enshrined on a plaque above their practice doors: “You shall not go from this place unharmed unless you go wiser than you came.” I for one am considering it. We as psychoanalytic therapists and patients will do good to remember his wise words.

Written by Henry Meiring (clinical psychologist, SAPC member). Find Henry on www.centurycitypsychology.co.za or follow him on www.twitter.com/hjmeiring 

References [i]             Sigmund Freud, “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through,” in vol. 12 of Standard Edition the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. And trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalyis, 1958). [ii]             Carl Gustav Jung, “Psychology and Alchemy,” in vol. 12 of Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York: Pantheon, 1953) [iii]             Hamilton Wright Mabie, “Norse Mythology: Great stories from the Eddas,” (New York: Dover Publications, 2002)

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