'Unjoined persons': psychic isolation in adolescence and its relation to bodily symptoms

This paper examines psychic isolation as an important element of adolescent development. The author conceives of psychic isolation in adolescence as an affective state with important developmental underpinnings. The affective elements are estrangement and loneliness. The developmental underpinnings include shifting ( conscious as well as unconscious, internal as well as external) object relations and senses of the self. Psychic isolation combined with the intensity of adolescent experience can leave adolescents unable to articulate their experience. This difficulty with articulation and symbolisation can leave them vulnerable to breakdown into concrete bodily symptoms. The paper uses Bion's conceptualisation of containment and the balance of psychotic vs. non-psychotic integrative parts of the personality to examine the emergence of concrete bodily symptoms in adolescence. At times, the transitional space of an analysis, where new experiences can be dreamed together with the analyst, allows adolescents to feel they are no longer 'unjoined persons' but 'members of the wedding'.