Pamela Thurschwell

Freud’s Stepchild: Adolescent Subjectivity and Psychoanalysis

The phrase in my title, “Freud’s stepchild,” comes from Anna Freud’s 1957 article “Adolescence” in which she surveys the scanty psychoanalytic writings on adolescence since her father’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Anna Freud quotes Ernest Jones’s 1922 article “Some Problems in Adolescence,” which came to the uninspiring conclusion that “the precise way in which a given person will pass through the necessary stages of development in adolescence is to a very great extent determined by the form of his infantile development.”1 Freud uses Jones to argue that most psychoanalysts writing about adolescence have slavishly followed her father who asserted in his Three Essays that what happens in adolescence is almost entirely a repetition of the infantile Oedipus crisis. Adolescence, Anna Freud claims, remains a “stepchild” in psychoanalytic theory in 1957.2 Of course “stepchild” is a loaded term in the overwrought, familial context of psychoanalysis. If adolescence—which one might identify with Anna, who is interested in it, who sees adolescent patients—is a stepchild in psychoanalysis, what does that make her, the apparently dutiful daughter? Is there a complaint about a lack of status lodged in that word? Can you be both a stepchild and a rightful heir?3 Or are there ways, perhaps, in which adolescence might benefit from being a “stepchild,” within the complex institutional politics of early twentieth-century psychoanalysis? Does being a stepchild give one perhaps more room for maneuver, rebellion, disobedience? (Consider the fairy-tale world of evil stepparents who are eventually vanquished by a series of triumphant stepchildren.) Might a stepchild also dislodge expected teleologies of progress, reproduction, or inheritance?

Quadrophenia and mod(ern) culture

This collection explores the centrality of The Whos classic album, and Franc Roddams cult classic film of adolescent life, Quadrophenia to the recent cultural history of Britain, to British subcultural studies, and to a continuing fascination with Mod style and culture. The interdisciplinary chapters collected here set the album and film amongst critical contexts including gender and sexuality studies, class analysis, and the film and albums urban geographies, seeing Quadrophenia as a transatlantic phenomenon and as a perennial adolescent story. Contributors view Quadrophenia through a variety of lenses, including the Whos history and reception, the 1970s English political and social landscape, the adolescent novel of development (the bildungsroman), the perception of the film through the eyes of Mods and Mod revivalists, 1970s socialist politics, punk, glam, sharp suits, scooters and the Brighton train, arguing for the continuing richness of Quadrophenias depiction of the adolescent dilemma. The volume includes new interviews with Franc Roddam, director of Quadrophenia, and the photographer Ethan Russell, who took the photos for the albums famous photo booklet.

“You were under the impression, that when you were walking forwards, that you’d end up further onwards, but things ain’t quite that simple”: time travelling and Quadrophenia’s segues

This chapter argues that through its segues and soundscape, Quadrophenia represents clashes between two historical moments, the early sixties and the early seventies. If the ending of Quadrophenia is notoriously ambiguous in its flirtation with suicide and its unanswered questions about Jimmy’s future, it may be that it is more productive to linger with the impasses that Quadrophenia dramatizes. Quadrophenia’s representation of Jimmy’s fraught relationship to Mod subculture, class, masculinity, sex, work, and the existential angst of the teenager, creates a dead-end for him in terms of one kind of narrative, the narrative of development, but opens up other possibilities that are enacted through Quadrophenia’s sometimes jarring leaps and transitions across space and time, its anachronisms, its nostalgia, its orientation toward a different kind of future.

Introduction: Dressed Right for a Beach Fight

The Who’s 1973 album Quadrophenia and Franc Roddam’s 1979 cult classic film based on the album are now inseparable from Mod identity, and in part responsible for the style’s staying power. If Mod as a style has been central to the development of cultural and subcultural studies in Britain, then Quadrophenia—the album and the film—is Mod’s canon. Quadrophenia brought Mod to the consciousness of the greater public and the world, and the cult status of the film means that it continues to introduce Mod style to subsequent generations. The introduction to this volume summarizes the articles included in the book, and makes a strong case for Quadrophenia’s continuing fascination.

Interview with Ethan Russell

Ethan Russell is a multiple Grammy-nominated photographer and director, who amongst other claims to fame, is the only photographer to have shot covers for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. Some of his best work can be found in the stunning photography booklet that accompanies the original album Quadrophenia. In this interview, he talks about the process of making the booklet amongst other topics.

Interview with Franc Roddam

As well as co-writing and directing Quadrophenia and creating Masterchef, Franc Roddam’s works include the award-winning TV drama Dummy, and BBC documentaries Mini and The Family. Roddam graciously agreed to be interviewed for this book to talk about some of the influences and decisions that went in to making the film. A transcription of the interview follows.

Forecasting Falls: Icarus from Freud to Auden to 9/11

Incidentally do you know that you saved my life again the other day when with an infinitely forgiving movement you allowed me to tell you where the trouble [le mal] is, its return always foreseeable, the catastrophe coming in advance [prevenante, also ‘thoughtful’, ‘warning’], called, given, dated. It is readable on a calendar, with its proper name, classified, you hear this word, nomenclatured. It wasn’t sufficient to foresee or to predict what would indeed happen one day,/forecasting is not enough/, it would be necessary to think (what does this mean here, do you know?) what would happen by the very fact of being predicted or foreseen, a sort of beautiful apocalypse telescoped, kaleidoscoped, triggered off at that very moment by the precipitation of the announcement itself, consisting precisely in this announcement, the prophecy returning to itself from the future of its own to-come [a-venir, also ‘future’, ‘writ of summons’]. (4)