2024-07-24 20:19:19
The director of the Psychological Care Clinic (Capsi), Casona de Las Condes headquarters, of the Andrés Bello University, María Pilar Palacios, refers to the complexification of emotions in adolescence.
A few weeks ago, Pixar’s sequel, Inside Out 2, was released and has been a huge success, becoming the most watched film in Chilean history. This animated adventure tells the story of Riley, a young girl and now a teenager, who goes through life and shows us her emotions on the big screen.
In this installment, the film tells us everything that has happened on an emotional level, starting with Riley’s growth, and how the new emotions that inhabit its protagonist are characterized. If before there were basic emotions such as joy, sadness, fear, anger or displeasure, typical of childhood, Now the teenager will experience new emotions such as anxiety, envy, shame and boredom.
All this happens in the middle of a sports camp, where the sense of belonging with their peers and their search for their own identity, beyond their family, play a fundamental role.
On this subject, María Pilar Palacios, psychologist and director of the Psychological Care Clinic (Capsi), Campus Casona de Las Condes, of the Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB), argues: “When children are young, they live under the codes of their parents, but when they reach adolescence there are biological and sociocultural changes and they begin to change the code towards their peers. This involves many questions and queries, which are very well portrayed in this film. Inside Out 2 helps us get into the subjective world of a teenager in that process of changing codes, because as Riley grows up, she needs to be able to find her place in the world, she needs to be able to find her place of belonging.”
One of the emotions that takes on the most importance in Riley’s life and in the film is the anxiety. Depicted in an orange color and always in an exalted condition, generating possible mental scenarios without stopping, this emotion leads the others in the beginning of the adolescence of its protagonist. Through the scene of an obvious anxiety attack suffered by the protagonist, this emotion is calmed by the others, seeking the emotional balance necessary for every human being.
“Although it is a film with a psychological background, it does not force us to pathologize adolescence. Riley has an anxiety attack, a thousand things happen in her head and in her world, but Riley manages to contain herself and she achieves this thanks to the fact that she is gaining autonomy at that moment, not thanks to a psychologist. A group of peers contains Riley and that manages to calm her from her anxiety attack. In that sense, I believe that it is a film that helps parents to look calmly and realize that adolescents in the company of their parents, without overprotection and trusting in what they have been given, can also, most of the time, overcome their crises without the help of a professional,” adds the academic María Pilar Palacios on this dimension.
We know very well that the film is focused on Riley’s life, but it also has a rather significant nod to her parents. On this, Maria Pilar Palaciosadds: “If parents have questions about their children’s adolescence, they should ask for help. Many times the questions are not from the teenager, but from the parents. And the insecurities themselves also come from the parents, because the teenager, whether he is having a good or bad time, is on a journey of discovery about himself and the world.”
Adolescence is a stage in which children have to integrate all the parts of themselves, those that have been with them since childhood and the new ones to be discovered with their peers. It is in this process that things change, some are destroyed and others are built as never before imagined.
This is portrayed in the film through Riley’s friendships. “As Riley makes one decision or another, the pillars of her stream of consciousness, where her essence is, are destroyed and the emotions that were there find other places to exist. Everything is changing very quickly, but it is not as if the teenager is left with no content or that his inner world is destroyed, but rather that it continues to exist, but in a different way. The memories are there, the pillars of his world too, but some references fall, very typical of the stage they are going through.concludes Maria Pilar Palacios.