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One of the prevailing trends in psychoanalysis is to look to developmentally earlier modes of experience to understand later psychopathology and character formation. It is therefore a pleasure to read an important contribution to psychoanalysis that reviews and expands our understanding of adolescence. It is during adolescence that the major issues of development may be resolved, and most adult psychopathology can be understood in terms of the various outcomes of adolescent struggles. A readable, sophisticated and clinically based textbook of adolescent psychoanalysis is therefore a welcome addition to the psychoanalytic literature.
H. Spencer Bloch, a child and adolescent analyst associated with the San Francisco Institute, explains that his text was intended to be
an easy-reading, clinically oriented text that enunciated the long-standing view of adolescent development, discussed the challenges to that theory, summarised relevant contributions from other fields, and included references for those who wished to explore the latter in depth … to include … and reconcile those of the older and newer findings that I have found serviceable into a view of the developmental process (vii).
His book succeeds in these goals.
Bloch outlines his central thesis in the first chapter. He states that adolescence involves internal