[Special Feature: 125 Years of Integrated Education] Yoko Hamada: Spending Adolescence at Affiliated Schools—From a Psychoanalytic Perspective

I am starting to write this manuscript while the excitement of Keio Senior High School's great performance at Koshien has yet to subside. Watching the team members playing freely at Koshien and the gaze of the manager watching over them, I felt that this truly represents the meaning of spending one's adolescence at affiliated schools.

While preparing for my final lecture in February 2022, I had the opportunity to look back on the days I spent at Keio University since entering Chutobu Junior High School, and I was able to trace, in my own way, the path from the questions I felt during adolescence to my aspiration to become a psychiatrist. Therefore, I would like to reflect on spending adolescence at affiliated schools based on my own personal history.

Adolescence is a process of great change, like a larva becoming an adult insect through a pupal stage. In this article, I use the term "adolescence" to encompass both puberty, the biological process of becoming an adult from a child, and adolescence, the psychosocial period until one becomes an independent member of society.

Psychoanalytically, there are two major tasks to be achieved during adolescence. First is adapting to rapid physical changes from childhood to adulthood and becoming aware of and able to control sexual impulses. Second is establishing emotional distance from parents, establishing ego identity, and becoming independent from the family in which one was born and raised.

Let's look at the process in more detail by dividing adolescence into three stages. The early stage, corresponding to the junior high school level, is a period characterized by rapid physical changes and heightened drives. The sense of discomfort when feelings cannot keep up with the changing body, and the irritability brought about by undifferentiated sexual impulses, can sometimes manifest as violent behavior, self-harm, eating disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorders. Usually, through intimate interaction with peers of the same age and sex, or through sports, culture, and artistic activities, these feelings of discomfort and irritability are gradually resolved. At the same time, children who have increased experiences outside the family begin to see their parents relatively and start to take psychological distance from them.

In the middle stage, corresponding to the high school level, both boys and girls approach adult body types, and gender identity is formed according to their own gender identity. Sexual impulses also become conscious as more sexual drives rather than mere irritability or violent behavior. This also becomes a challenge to the values (superego) incorporated from parents during childhood. During this period, the brain's cognitive thinking abilities also develop, and the ability to read difficult books and engage in discussion grows. They often try to out-argue their parents. Friendships and extracurricular activities continue to be important.

And the late stage, corresponding to the university years, is the time to establish Ego Identity. Through specialized learning, extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, internships, and interaction with peers of the same generation, they try out various possibilities, select from among them, create themselves as psychosocially responsible adults, and leave the home where they were born and raised.

As mentioned above, when children begin to see their parents relatively during adolescence, they experience disillusionment with them. This becomes an internal object loss—the loss of the ideal parental image held since early childhood. Okonogi named this "Adolescent Mourning" *1. While mild anxiety and depressive symptoms may be seen, it is a necessary process for adolescent separation from parents and independence. What softens this is a new presence to replace the parents, an older brother or sister-like figure. This is called a "new object." Adolescent children need to break down the values and superego inherited from their parents and rebuild them as their own, and the new object also plays a role in promoting that process.

It is a bit embarrassing, but I would like to look back on my own adolescence spent at Chutobu Junior High School and the Girls' Senior High School.

When I entered Chutobu Junior High School, there was no teacher's platform in the classroom. It was very refreshing that the teachers treated the students as equals in a flat classroom. In terms of club activities, I joined the girls' softball club, and during the first summer training camp I participated in, an incident occurred where I became disillusioned with adults. Looking back now, it was a trivial matter, but to me at the time, just entering adolescence and full of a sense of justice, "dirty adults" were unforgivable. Around 1970, there were security treaty protests and campus disputes, and the world was in turmoil. I was obsessed with late-night radio broadcasts; I would take a nap after dinner, wake up in the middle of the night, and listen to the radio. I felt as if the adult world during the day was dirty and wrong, and the world of the night that the personality spoke to was the real one. I might have behaved quite rudely toward the teachers, whom I probably regarded as representatives of "dirty adults." It was a time when I felt confused by my own emotions.

I went on to the Girls' Senior High School, and since there was no softball club, I was invited by a senior to join the mountaineering club. During summer vacations, I went to the mountains with a tent and food packed into a horizontal canvas backpack. Carrying a heavy pack, I climbed in a party with teachers, seniors, and friends, and camped in tents amidst blooming alpine plants. In the midst of great nature, I poignantly felt how tiny human existence is.

Another major experience during my high school years was a short-term study abroad program at Punahou School in Hawaii, which I participated in during the summer vacation of my second year. This was a six-week program in which high school students from Japan and abroad, centered on Keio's three high schools, participated. For the first time, I lived away from my family, stayed with a host family overseas, and experienced a different culture. The final assignment for this program was a presentation on the theme "What’s American identity?" This was before I knew about Erikson, but I encountered the word "identity" and spent six weeks thinking deeply about America, Hawaii, Japan, and myself. I spent a very intense summer with friends, studying, playing, and experiencing romance. This summer of 2023 marks exactly 50 years since that short-term study abroad in Hawaii, and a reunion was held. Many friends gathered, and memories blossomed as we looked at old photos. Even though our hair had thinned and wrinkles had increased, once we started talking, it was as if we had stepped onto a time machine and returned to "that summer" in an instant. It was a six-week period so full of stimulation that it was deeply etched in my memory.

Why I loathed "dirty adults" so much in junior high school, that sense of discomfort with myself, and encountering psychoanalysis through learning about Erikson from the word "identity" I encountered in Hawaii, became the catalysts for my aspiring to be a psychiatrist.

Looking back on my own adolescence after studying psychoanalytic developmental theory, I could understand that that loathing had aspects where my confusion toward my own maturing mind and body and disillusionment with my parents were displaced onto adults in society, and my devotion to late-night broadcasts was perhaps a manifestation of adolescent mourning. And the mountain trips and short-term study abroad during my high school years promoted the process of separating from my parents. In the midst of great nature and a cross-cultural environment, spending time with peers, my gender identity was gradually established. Through thinking about identity and interacting with seniors who were new objects, I believe I was able to nurture my own goal of becoming a psychiatrist from something hazy into something gradually clear.

Looking back on my junior and senior high school years spent so freely, I feel the benefits of having spent my adolescence at Keio University's affiliated schools.

The most obvious benefit is not being hindered by studying for entrance exams. In affiliated schools where recommendation to Keio University is almost guaranteed, many students can engage in studies, extracurricular activities, and other activities based on their own internal motivation, and there are many systems available for students to utilize, such as study abroad.

Second is the strong connection with senior university students. Just as the existence of student coaches was highlighted in the media regarding the success of the Keio Senior High School baseball team, university students are involved as coaches in many extracurricular activities. In the Girls' Senior High School mountaineering club as well, many university students came to the training camps. Seniors become new objects for students and promote the creation of new values for them. They also become role models for imagining university life.

And while it is as natural as the air, the most important thing is that the middle and high school students as a whole are protected by an environment that holds certain values. This may be the power of Keio University's tradition, but the spirit of independence and self-respect, or "Fukuzawa-ism," is shared by the faculty, staff, seniors, and others surrounding the students. As seen in the success of the Keio Senior High School baseball team, respecting each student as an individual is done very naturally. I myself had the illusion that I had grown up freely on my own, but looking back now, I realize that I was able to do so thanks to the adults who were watching over me even when I did somewhat dangerous things. This environment of affiliated schools is a "holding environment" in psychoanalytic terms, creating a space where students can act freely and with peace of mind.

I want to sincerely thank my parents and teachers for allowing me to spend my adolescence in such a blessed environment. However, at the same time, I believe we must not forget to be aware of how blessed we are. Just as the excessively large cheering at Koshien was criticized, there is a risk in spending time only among those who share the same values. Like shedding a pupal shell to grow, it is also necessary to look toward the wider world.

Finally, it goes without saying that adolescent development is greatly influenced by what kind of family relationships were experienced before then. In modern times, family structures are diversifying, and it is not uncommon for students to have suffered psychological trauma before entering junior high school, making the developmental process of adolescence more complex. However, precisely because it is becoming more complex, I believe that spending adolescence within the stable environment of Keio University's integrated education, with its 125-year tradition, holds very important meaning for healthy physical and mental development throughout one's life.