The Psychoanalytic Treatment of Young Adults as a Rite of Passage: Discussion of the Conference

This was a rich and thought-provoking day of discussions.1 Presenting an accurate account of all the important points raised in the papers and the discussions is an impossible task, so I have selected just four main areas. I will briefly present the first, which is the research format itself, and will then discuss in more detail three themes which are of conceptual and clinical relevance.

The four main themes discussed throughout the Conference were:

1. the research format;

2. the question of what is specific to young adults, as opposed to older adults and even adolescents;

3. the importance of the attachment to the ‘preoedipal mother’;

4. the role of the analyst.

1. The Research Format

   In their paper Professor Fonagy and Dr Tallandini-Shallice outlined the format of the research project. They first pointed out the methodological problems in researching the regularities of the psychoanalytic process without distorting the procedure under observation. This difficulty has been one of the factors leading to the confusion between facts and interpretations in psychoanalysis, whereby psychoanalysts have tended to use arguments of authority to justify their theories.