Terri E Apter Quotes

#1. The family is constantly changing, as each member changes. Some changes we recognize as developments, and the pleasure they bringusually makes us more adaptable. Some changes threaten, or disappoint other members, who may try to resist the change, or punish someone for changing.

Terri E Apter

#2. Old age is a strange country, and most of us enter it unwillingly.

Terri E Apter

#3. Adolescent girls were fighting a mother's interference because they wanted her to acknowledge their independence. Whatever resentment they had was not towards a mother's excessive concern, or even excessive control, but towards her inability to see, and appreciate, their maturing identity.

Terri E Apter

#4. Adolescents do get very angry with their parents, and acknowledging this anger is part of acknowledging them. If the anger is notacknowledged then its expression is increased. The parent seems super-strong. The adolescent tries to become the super-attacker.

Terri E Apter

#5. Sexual activity, for women, has a history of vulnerability, in a way it simply does not have for men. The mother has to teach thishidden text to her daughter. The mother's warnings, her attempts to halt sexual development in her daughter, are not so much signs of disapproval or envy, but of fear.

Terri E Apter

#6. We may be aware of small increments of getting older; we may meet an increasing number of people who make us uneasy with their youth; but the fact of being old ourselves comes as a surprise, and is often accompanied by the belief that there has been some mistake.

Terri E Apter

#7. One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity
not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification ofthe range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.

Terri E Apter

#8. Preoccupied with her self, the adolescent sees enormous changes, whereas the parent sees the child she knew all along. For the parent, new developments are superficial and evanescent. For the adolescent, they are thrilling and profound.

Terri E Apter