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I came to this book with high expectations as Waddell is one of the rare clinicians who is able to combine a deep knowledge of literature with clinical examples from her extensive adolescent caseload. She also writes beautifully.
From the first chapter Waddell makes links with fictional works, such as in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Camus' The Outsider, to illustrate the “protracted state of confusion and complexity” (9) in adolescence. However, she makes clear that while adolescence might be the most unsettled period of the life cycle, it also has the potential to be one of the richest.
Philosophers from Aristotle onwards have grappled with the questions: What does it mean to be? What does it mean to be oneself? How can I be authentic? At no time are these questions more pressing than in adolescence, which is somewhat ironic given that this is a period when the mind is often at its most dissembling, fluctuating and self-deceiving.
How then are the stormy waters of this stage to be navigated? How can a safe haven be found without succumbing to either the Scylla of manic behaviour or the Charybdis of depression? The adolescent must move away from the family constellation of his or her earlier years in order to forge a new, or at least different, identity both as an individual and within a group. A hopeful aspect of adolescence, as Waddell points out, is how fluid this stage of life can be – everything might be in flux but it also brings the possibility of change for the better. This fluidity causes Waddell to speculate that narcissism may be a self-protective process rather than a condition that is more likely to be diagnosed as a narcissistic disorder (my italics) in older adults. In this more positive light, narcissism can be regarded as a “prelude to insight, self-knowledge, and the capacity to bear the daily humiliations and sensed inadequacies that shadow these difficult years” (158).
Waddell does not underestimate the courage an adolescent needs in order t