People are reminded that they resist, how they resist and finally what they are resisting. Others take their cue from Kohut where the self is taken as a central core bounded and autonomous with an essential nucleus or heart like an artichoke. Outer protective layers that do not relate to the central core are to be discarded in therapy and those layers that do relate to the core are to be strengthened and this leads to a greater sense of cohesion. This is often in direct contrast to the view of most adolescents who believe they have an unified self, while they may overestimate the ease of changing this self and underestimate the difficulty of moving away from the culturally sanctioned niche provided by their family tradition or local culture. Adults often see the many distinct social selves available to an adolescent as allowing for a near schizophrenic approach of oscillation from one to another.
Adolescents see the time of trial and error as discarding old coverings and trying on new ones.
The overstated independent and autonomous strivings are necessary to strengthen a coherent self. The very fear of loss of self from disintegration or further fragmentation may cause in an individual such anxiety that the self often has to be seen by the troubled owner as unified. The latter posture can lead to sessions characterized with the therapist being the chief adolescent in the room. There is another stance however. The adolescent I is defined in contrast to the field of different family selves from which the adolescent wishes to disembed.