In everyday use, a truant is someone who stays away from school ‘without leave or good reason’, and though originally the word denoted ‘a vagrant’ or ‘an idler’, both meanings suggest someone
who takes time out of work – work defined here as real life.
When Hamlet asks Horatio why he has come back from Wittenberg, Horatio replies, ‘a truant disposition, good my lord’; to which Hamlet replies: ‘I would not have your enemy say so.’
Hamlet can’t accept this description of his friend, which he calls
‘your own report against yourself. I know you are no truant.’
In Hamlet’s view, it’s a terrible thing to call oneself; he accuses Horatio of self-betrayal,
of siding with his enemy against himself.
We tend to think of people playing truant from school, from some external, often institutional constraint: like being on day release, or taking a holiday from one’s real responsibilities.
Hamlet, in other words, reminds us that it is possible to play truant from oneself. Freud says we
can’t help doing this: Hamlet says we shouldn’t do it.
The adolescent is the person who needs to experiment with self-betrayal, to find out what it
might be to betray oneself. Not what it means to break the rules; but what it means to break
the rules that are of special, of essential value to oneself. And in order to do this you have to
find out which rules are essential.
So-called delinquent behaviour is the unconscious attempt to find the rules that really matter
to the delinquent individual. And this is a frightening quest. Betraying other people matters
only if in so doing one has betrayed oneself. This is what truant minds are for, and what modern adolescence ineluctably embroils people in: the attempt to find out what it is to betray oneself,
and what the consequences of self-betrayal are.
‘I have always admired people who have left behind them an incomprehensible mess,’
Bob Dylan once said in an interview. What I am talking about is the willingness to get oneself
into an incomprehensible mess.
Winnicott talks about delinquent children having to ‘test the environment’ through really bad behaviour. Children who had been evacuated from their homes during the war, for example,
had to be able to be difficult when they finally got home, just to ensure that their parents could be trusted not to send them away again. Only by being really difficult can the child discover
whether the parents are resilient and robust – worth having. If the child, or even adult, is
never really difficult he will never find out what the world and he himself are really like.
The adolescent is someone who is trying to evacuate himself from his own home because
there is a war going on. Having a ‘truant disposition’ is to be engaged in this testing that
begins in adolescence, and if things go wrong, is given up on in adolescence.
The adolescents who give up on this fundamental project turn into adults, it might be agued,
who secretly envy adolescents, who believe that adolescents are having the best kinds of life available.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n03/adam-phillips/in-praise-of-difficult-children
who takes time out of work – work defined here as real life.
When Hamlet asks Horatio why he has come back from Wittenberg, Horatio replies, ‘a truant disposition, good my lord’; to which Hamlet replies: ‘I would not have your enemy say so.’
Hamlet can’t accept this description of his friend, which he calls
‘your own report against yourself. I know you are no truant.’
In Hamlet’s view, it’s a terrible thing to call oneself; he accuses Horatio of self-betrayal,
of siding with his enemy against himself.
We tend to think of people playing truant from school, from some external, often institutional constraint: like being on day release, or taking a holiday from one’s real responsibilities.
Hamlet, in other words, reminds us that it is possible to play truant from oneself. Freud says we
can’t help doing this: Hamlet says we shouldn’t do it.
The adolescent is the person who needs to experiment with self-betrayal, to find out what it
might be to betray oneself. Not what it means to break the rules; but what it means to break
the rules that are of special, of essential value to oneself. And in order to do this you have to
find out which rules are essential.
So-called delinquent behaviour is the unconscious attempt to find the rules that really matter
to the delinquent individual. And this is a frightening quest. Betraying other people matters
only if in so doing one has betrayed oneself. This is what truant minds are for, and what modern adolescence ineluctably embroils people in: the attempt to find out what it is to betray oneself,
and what the consequences of self-betrayal are.
‘I have always admired people who have left behind them an incomprehensible mess,’
Bob Dylan once said in an interview. What I am talking about is the willingness to get oneself
into an incomprehensible mess.
Winnicott talks about delinquent children having to ‘test the environment’ through really bad behaviour. Children who had been evacuated from their homes during the war, for example,
had to be able to be difficult when they finally got home, just to ensure that their parents could be trusted not to send them away again. Only by being really difficult can the child discover
whether the parents are resilient and robust – worth having. If the child, or even adult, is
never really difficult he will never find out what the world and he himself are really like.
The adolescent is someone who is trying to evacuate himself from his own home because
there is a war going on. Having a ‘truant disposition’ is to be engaged in this testing that
begins in adolescence, and if things go wrong, is given up on in adolescence.
The adolescents who give up on this fundamental project turn into adults, it might be agued,
who secretly envy adolescents, who believe that adolescents are having the best kinds of life available.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n03/adam-phillips/in-praise-of-difficult-children
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