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Abstract
This paper examines psychic isolation as an important element of adolescent developmental experience. Separation processes can eventuate in an affective sense of isolation, which can be painful to bear. Psychic isolation combined with the intensity of adolescent experience can leave adolescents unable to articulate their experience. This difficulty with articulation and symbolization can leave them vulnerable to breakdown into concrete bodily symptoms. Bion's conceptualization of containment and the balance of psychotic versus integrative parts of the personality will be used to examine the emergence of concrete bodily symptoms in adolescence. At times the transitional space of an analysis where new experiences can be dreamed together with the analyst, allow adolescents to feel they are no longer “unjoined persons” but “members of the wedding” (McCullers, 1946).