I WOULD LIKE TO DRAW ATTENTION in these remarks to the rich possibilities that lie in the application of Winnicott's concepts on transitional objects and phenomena to some psychopathologic aspects of adolescent behavior and the problems of their treatment. At a time when the adolescent is in transition from dependency on family to membership in a wider social group as an individual responsible for himself, we may witness pathological manifestations involving the exaggerated or distorted use of transitional phenomena, whose function is to deny the threat of loss and separation.

In a previous presentation (Straetz, 1975), I offered a tentative hypothesis about the role of transitional phenomena in hysterical psychosis in ghetto adolescents facing separation and loss under conditions of long-term deprivation. There is now a small but growing literature on the integration of Winnicott's constructs with a variety of other clinical pictures in adolescence. These range over