ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact of culture on adolescent development. Adolescence marks that period in development when the membrane between psyche and culture is most porous. The adolescent psyche is swept along by the tides of cultural forces, giving voice in personal style, dress, and comportment to what is unconscious at the level of the collective. In theorizing about adolescence, Winnicott offers an expanded conception of the facilitating environment, where the individual-culture dyad replaces the infant–mother dyad of early infancy and childhood. Winnicott stressed the need for an environmental response to adolescent experimentation. Adolescents, he believed, cannot wholly contain themselves, and thus he spoke of the importance of the adult’s being there, holding the line, in the face of the antisocial, destructive behaviour that gives expression to adolescent rage. Winnicott traces the fantasy/fantasying divide to early impingements upon the infant–mother dyad.
