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On October 10, 1992, a one-day workshop was organized at the Anna Freud Centre, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Anna Freud's death. A few years ago, the Centre was privileged to receive a very generous grant specifically intended to encourage the psychoanalytic treatment of young adults aged between 18 and 25 years. This was thought to be a rather neglected age-group, too old to be covered by most child-orientated clinics and too young for psychoanalytically oriented centres to consider.
After some exploratory meetings under the chairmanship of George Moran, ‘The Young Adults Research Group’ was set up and started meeting regularly two evenings a month from November 1990. From the outset ways were devised of collecting clinical data in a systematic way. All potential patients go through the same intake procedure. If the referral is thought to be appropriate, the patient is asked to have two psychoanalytic assessment interviews - one with a male and one with a female psychoanalyst. These are then followed by two further consultations with a psychiatrist for standardized psychiatric diagnosis. Some psychological tests are given, and we hope to repeat these at the end of treatment. As soon as the young adult starts his or her analysis, the analyst fills in a weekly rating scale covering such items as the patient's general attitude to analysis, manifest content, predominant affective and predominant unconscious themes, the analyst's style of intervention, analytic understanding (including the analyst's reflections on the patient's material), general transference themes, and various other items. The analyst is also asked to write a brief report on the development of the treatment over the previous week. Further, each analyst is required to write, approximately once a month, a very full description of one session, the date of which is chosen at random.