‘Adolescence’ and Western failure
One of the most serious failures in recent decades is the education of young people. Prosperity societies promote the commodification of all the domains of life, the atomization of the human, but also growing inequalities and an emotional state marked mainly by reactivity and frivolous emotionality.
Data from the National Coordination of Mental Health Policies tell us that: « In Portugal, almost 31% of young people have depressive symptoms, most moderate or serious. » The Mental Health Promotion Program, ‘more with you’ reveals that 45% of adolescents in a sample of 13,000 adolescents have depressive symptoms. A study coordinated by the University of Évora, revealed that about 23% of university students were diagnosed with a mental illness. Suicide rates have recorded a worrying increase in recent years. The 2022 (HBSC) data reveal that 25% of young people have already been intentionally injured. The Portuguese portrait is even more serious in more developed western countries. There is indeed a very serious problem and it is not due to factors outside the model of society in which we live.
The destruction of solid values, stable family structure and fundamental figures of paternity and motherhood has contributed significantly to this picture, and it is not just the idealization of the past. These references are deviliated by the progressive vulgate as a retrograde promotion of traditional values, but if change is fundamental, the preservation of what is structuring should be recovered and adapted to the necessary.
Bowlby in his work on attachment explains us how the most confident humans, how astronauts had something in common, namely a solid family environment (not about the castrating father and the submissive mother) for high levels of confidence, autonomy and emotional resilience. Whenever you have a child life changes and there is a new and fundamental responsibility. The mother the father is irreplaceable and his roles are not interductable. The importance of male and female imagery is decisive in the formation of psychic structure. The ‘death of the father’ had consequences. It was this figure that pitches the fusional relationship of the mother with her child, allowing the psychic growth of the child. Now, more and more this fusional relationship is not broken, and the individual becomes adult, but does not grow, it is immature.
The predominant atmosphere of overprotection and toxic sentimentality disarm the human of a world that is also conflict and failure. The sick protectionism of progressive parents is the weak compensation for their failure. The new generations are psychologically unforeseen for life, and react to undertaking escapes, sometimes ahead, sometimes taking refuge in your private world. They are not educated to resist frustration, to realize that immediate satisfaction and pleasure are not the main objectives of a life, nor to face the insecurities, fears and weaknesses that constitute us.
Anyone who educates his child for example and work and being autonomous, supportive, strong, brave, sensible, ambitious, but fair, will see it with great probability that he will not become an immature adult, a psychopath, or a disturbed person. It takes a lot of work, requires time and healthy love.
