Helene Deutsch: Selected Problems of Adolescence. With Special Emphasis on Group Formation. Monograph No. 3 of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child,  International Universities Press, New York 1967.  134 pages.)

There is by now a rich psychoanalytic literature dealing with the psychological problems arising or crystallizing during the stormy and difficult developmental phase of adolescence. But analysts have so far often neglected to focus their attention on the interaction of adolescent development with the social environment against the background of which it takes place.

In her monograph, Helene Deutsch has given us a fascinating and authoritative account of this very interaction, thus filling a real gap in the understanding not so much of psychological processes during adolescence as such but of their contribution to adolescent group phenomena met with so frequently and often enigmatically in our days. Her book deals, for instance, with the dynamics of phenomena like the “noisy Beatle-addicted conglomeration of girls in their early adolescence”; the unconscious motives behind the sharp increase in pregnancies and illegitimate babies among adolescent girls, seen against the more widespread phenomenen of greater sexual freedom and promiscuity; the sexual identity between adolescent boys and girls, overtly reflected in their attire and behaviour; the motives underlying the demands and revolts of student groups etc.

The monograph is an attempt to bring together the psychoanalytic emphasis on the individual, psychological aspects of the problems posed by adolescents, and the sociological point of view which places the stress on the social developments which determine the adolescent's actions, problems and ideals. The aim of the monograph was to “develop psychoanalytic insight into the origin, nature, and goals of the group formations of our contemporary adolescents”. In order to achieve this aim, Helen Deutsch has drawn very little on actual analytic case material of adolescents whom she has treated, though she occasionally refers to relevant features of analytic cases in order to substantiate conclusions reached on the basis of non-analytic contacts with adolescents. Rather s