L.I.E.: An Adolescent’s Rocky Road To Mourning
by Judith A. Yanof
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
L.I.E. stands for the Long Island Expressway and is also the title of Michael Cuesta’s 2001 award-winning independent film about one boy’s turbulent journey to adulthood. While the particulars of this adolescent’s life are unusually difficult, the film evokes something typical about coming of age for boys in an affluent American suburb. The film also conveys a sense of the peril that can befall any adolescent. This is evoked in the film by a feeling of danger that grows in intensity and moves from background to foreground as it underpins the story line. The film-maker makes some important observations about identity,sexuality, and mourning in the context of adolescent development using the film’s gripping emotional narrative.
L.I.E. is a story about loss and its aftermath as well as a developmental journey. The main character is a 15 year-old adolescent named Howie Blitzer (played by Paul Dano) whose life has been tragically altered because his mother has died suddenly in a car crash. Losing a parent in childhood or adolescence is an event of such magnitude that it often overwhelms the capacity to cope. This is because the adolescent, not yet psychologically separate, is still deeply dependent on the parent for a sense of well-being, for the buffering of inner tensions and affect states, and for the support of mental structures not yet fully developed (Samuels, 1988)<…>
International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 96/4:1169–1181, August 2015.
Link to Online Publication (fulltext can be requested from library@bpsi.org).
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