ABSTRACT

In her adolescence Pamela changed tack. She was no longer quiet and compliant. Puberty is a time of changed motivations and potential turmoil. The males and females in Pamela’s network of friends have changed, preoccupied with other interests. Sexuality and power issues drive the adolescent group. Power struggles in the family and at school are now expressed in alternative ways. Their emotions are raw and near the surface; issues of keeping face demand a different kind of face work to that used in childhood. In such a context, behavioural patterns, which have been picked out, become used in the service of all for new

strategic purposes, given the preoccupations of adolescence. Adolescence is one of the times to expect change in attachment strategy (Crittenden, 2001). Strategies are thought to be automatically employed, brought into play from procedural memory, and need not be in any way conscious for the individual (Main, 1990). Eventual attribution of malingering to Pamela’s strategic use of her asthma is missing the central point about how strategies come to be embodied in procedural memory, learnt according to behavioural learning principles, and preconscious.