Dr. Louise Kaplan contributes here her thoughts on “the stepchild” of psychoanalysis—adolescence, an area in which she is a specialist and which is the topic of one of her many books, Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood . Originally delivered as the Anna Freud Commemorative Address for 1986 to the New York Freudian Society, Dr. Kaplan's article builds on Anna Freud's unique experience of the “intolerant” ego of the adolescent and is a contemporary reworking to which she brings her own original interpretation and experience. By using clinical examples, she shows how historical insights combine with contemporary therapeutic preoccupations and critical tensions to forge future directions in treatment of the sexual and moral transformations of adolescence.