Surfing the Inner Wave: Reflections on Adolescents, Success Culture, and the Emotional Cost of Achievement

A Psychoanalytic Reflection on the Cultural Overvaluation of Achievement

Ethical Note:
This post is a personal psychoanalytic reflection written in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and Austrian legal standards. It contains no confidential clinical material or disclosures from professional events. All content is theoretical, non-identifiable, and intended solely for educational and reflective purposes.

Introduction: Caught in the Current of Success

Adolescence is a time marked by inner conflict, identity formation, and social transformation. Today, however, adolescents face a cultural landscape where success is narrowly defined by measurable achievements—academic results, sports performance, social media presence, and popularity. These external markers often overshadow the vital developmental needs for emotional exploration, psychic differentiation, and authentic self-experience.

Mary Brady (2009) has eloquently described the psychoanalytic stance with adolescents as “learning to surf” their internal turbulence: joining them in the storm rather than attempting to lead them out of it. This approach requires tolerating imbalance and uncertainty, resisting the urge to fix or simplify the complexity of adolescent psychic growth.

Psychic Turbulence and Foreclosure of the Inner World

Under relentless societal pressure to succeed, many adolescents may foreclose their inner emotional lives. Rather than engaging in fantasy, play, or nuanced feeling, they develop defensive compliance—crafting personalities designed primarily for visibility rather than vitality.

Anne Alvarez (1992, 2012) conceptualizes this dynamic through the idea of the “stupid object,” an internal figure representing the damaged, dependent, or weak aspects of the self. Without a containing, reflective external object, these parts of the self become psychically deadened, lacking capacity for symbolization or mentalization.

Psychoanalysis seeks to introduce what Alvarez calls the “interesting object”: an internal figure able to think, survive projection, and bear emotional complexity without collapsing or retaliating.

Oblivious Objects: When Emotional Attunement Is Absent

In many families emphasizing achievement, children may receive praise for accomplishments without genuine recognition of their emotional realities. Parents may admire success yet remain unaware of underlying distress, shame, or anxiety. This phenomenon, described by Adam Phillips (2012) as the “oblivious object,” reflects a presence that is admiring but emotionally unresponsive.

Such obliviousness often functions defensively, allowing caregivers to maintain their own psychic balance by avoiding difficult emotional engagement. The cultural overvaluation of success thus risks silencing authentic subjectivity, transforming praise into subtle disconnection.

The Analyst as Thinking Object in a Culture of Performance

Psychoanalytic work offers a profound alternative to a culture focused on performance metrics: a space where emotions are not judged but explored, where thinking unfolds within the presence of a receptive other.

Bion (1962) emphasized that the crucial analytic capacity is containment—the ability to hold and process thoughts and feelings that have not yet fully formed. Adolescents arriving in treatment may appear emotionally flat or mistrustful, often reflecting histories of emotional neglect—being seen, but not truly thought about (Fonagy et al., 2002).

For these young people, the analyst’s presence must go beyond interpretation. It must be emotionally steady, curious, and containing—offering a new kind of internal object, one that is neither “stupid” nor “oblivious,” but deeply interested.

Narcissistic Formations and Emotional Avoidance in Families

Many contemporary families unconsciously enact narcissistic formations: children are idealized for achievements but denied space for emotional complexity (Brady, 2009). Expressing doubt, distress, or anger may be experienced as threatening to the parent’s fragile equilibrium.

This suppression is rarely intentional. Most parents deeply love their children and want them to succeed. Yet in cultures prioritizing material success and visibility, families often struggle to provide sufficient containment for psychic pain.

Children who are shy, angry, or defiant—those who disrupt parental fantasies—most urgently need emotionally available adults who can think with them rather than simply advise or dismiss.

Conclusion: Staying with the Wave

To “learn to surf,” psychoanalytically speaking, means to remain engaged with psychic conflict without trying to control or avoid it. This stance is central to work with adolescents—meeting them at the edge of identity, within the currents of performance, and in the silent despair of being seen but not truly known.

In a culture where achievement is overvalued and emotional life undervalued, psychoanalysis offers a unique space. Here, emotions become sources of knowledge, and being confused, vulnerable, or “out of control” is not failure but part of becoming a person.

Psychoanalysis provides not a quick fix but a relationship—a thinking, feeling internal object that can hold the adolescent’s inner world without judgment, intrusion, or idealization. This relationship is where meaningful change begins.

Confidentiality and Ethics Statement:
This article contains no identifiable clinical material and fully complies with the ethical standards of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and Austrian professional regulations. It is reflective and theoretical in nature, intended solely for educational purposes.

References

• Alvarez, A. (1992). Live Company: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children. Routledge.

• Alvarez, A. (2012). The Thinking Heart: Three Levels of Psychoanalytic Work in Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents. Routledge.

• Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. Heinemann.

• Brady, M. (2009). Contemporary Adolescence: Narcissistic Structures and the Need for Analytic Space. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 35(3), 231–248.

• Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. Other Press.

• Phillips, A. (2012). Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.