Mad With Desire: Tipping Points for Creating and Destroying in Male Adolescence 1

This article explores the complexities of male desire during adolescence. This formative period offers opportunities for a boy to discover desire as a creative and pleasurable experience, both physically and psychologically. Accumulating such experiences furthers a kind of male initiation in which a boy's body is accepted and embraced as he approaches manhood. However, there are many points along this path in which desire can tip into destruction. Sabina Spielrein's seminal paper on this topic of creation and destruction is reviewed. An example from contemporary media, the Netflix series Adolescence , shows a representation of such a destructive outcome. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther , written over 250 years ago, retains relevance for understanding another tragic turn in this balance of desire. In this story, a young man's desire becomes his self‐destruction. A clinical example offers evidence for the fragility of tipping points in male adolescence when desire spirals into madness. The author discusses the importance of real contact with a father or father figure and introduces a concept of a scarecrow father to show possible factors contributing to a destructive, rather than a creative, evolution of male desire in adolescence.