Although “adolescent turmoil” has been considered normative in adolescence by generations of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, I cite research to demonstrate (a) that such distress is less common than is generally believed, and that when it occurs (b) it is better understood as emanating from difficulties in the attachment-individuation process than from separation distress, which many have believed normally accompanies the adolescent passage to adulthood. This shift allows for a clearer distinction between healthy and pathological development. The clinical presentation of (a) extreme ambivalence toward parents and (b) dramatic symptoms that often contain concretized expressions of developmental needs and intersubjectively discordant responses to those needs (see also Doctors, 1987) can be recognized as signifying disordered attachment processes rather than normal adolescent separation issues.