Erik H. Erikson likened adolescence to the leap of a trapeze artist. According to the German psychologist, just like a trapeze artist, “every young person, in the midst of his vigorous impulse, must abandon the firm grip of childhood and try to grasp a solid foothold in adulthood”. In this leap the teenager is not alone. Everything depends “on the reliability of those from whom he comes and those who are destined to receive him”. Daniele Bruzzone, full professor of General and Social Pedagogy, chooses Erikson’s words to introduce the conference “Adolescents today, the challenge of growing up in a time of uncertainty”, focused on “those who find themselves growing up in a time marked by profound uncertainty and growing discomfort” and organized on the Piacenza campus of the Catholic University by the Department of Pedagogy of the Faculty of Education Sciences, as part of its 40th anniversary, in collaboration with the Center for Studies on Contexts, Affects and Educational Relations (Care) directly managed from Bruzzone and with the Association of Franklian Logotherapy and Existential Analysis (Alæf), for which the president Daniela Pavoncello intervenes.
“In recent months the Care Study Center has been busy with research on pre-adolescents and adolescents which will involve almost 800 girls and boys from secondary schools in Piacenza and the province of Piacenza” says Professor Bruzzone. “We felt it was important to also think about the world of adults who surround adolescents and who are often just as fragile and disoriented as them. Because adolescence, as the word itself says, necessarily refers to adulthood, so we cannot talk about young people without questioning ourselves.”
The Gian Carlo Mazzocchi auditorium is packed on a Saturday morning and immediately conveys the idea of a topic of great interest, as well as absolutely topical. “The pandemic and the internet are not the cause of the hardships of today’s adolescents” comments Matteo Lancini, psychologist and psychotherapist, president of the “Minotauro” Foundation of Milan and professor of clinical psychology of developmental age at the Catholic University. “The health emergency has exacerbated an already existing suffering in boys and girls, while the spread of socialization and virtual gaming experiences almost never represent an anti-evolutionary addiction”. Because, explains Lancini, the internet and the pandemic “are the screens where the contradictions and educational poverty of increasingly fragile adults are projected, who struggle to identify with the evolutionary reasons of their children and students”.
“When an adolescent finds himself in conditions unfavorable to growth, his suffering is expressed through signs and symptoms that concern above all the body, such as self-harming behaviour, self-reclusion, suicide attempts, disturbed eating behaviours, the use of toxic substances” explains Giulia Sagliocco, psychiatrist and psychotherapist at the Naples Local Health Authority. “Good listening that cures allows sufficient time and space for both young patients and therapists, because dedicating oneself to the care of young people means preventing their access to a chronic psychiatric circuit, which leads to treating the patient as a jammed mechanism to be repaired and which inexorably leads to inauthenticity”.
The speakers’ interventions alternated with theatrical moments taken from the show “Altrove” by Mattia Cabrini with the Compagnia dei Piccoli of Cremona. “With this conference we wanted to highlight that adolescence is not just the age of disengagement and malaise, as often emerges from news events” says Antonella Arioli, professor of Pedagogy of educational work and training at the Catholic University , member of the Board of Directors of the Franklian Logotherapy and Existential Analysis Association and director of the Franklinian Existential Counseling School promoted by Alæf.
“Adolescence is an existential condition particularly characterized by the need to find meaning in life situations, to intuit a purpose worth committing to”. This, however, does not happen automatically, and adults are very important in this sense. They are like a trapeze artist’s solid handhold.
