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Of the spectrum of developmental ages and stages from birth through death, many analysts have concluded that the most difficult stage to understand and analyze is adolescence. The induced feelings,
the fuzzy es between developmental tasks and unuseful, destructive defenses, as well as the impulsivity of this stage has made patients of this age difficult to diagnose and treat.
Peter Blos in his collected works, The Adolescent Passage: Developmental Issues, offers an enlightened and meaningful work on adolescence including his own innovative theories that are based on forty years of psychoanalytic practice with children, adolescents, and their families. He indicates that practitioners who work with children will understand and have an easier time with adolescents, for the roots of problems and resolutions of this stage are to be found in early childhood rather than in maladaptive adult behavior.
Blos' background is scientific. He came from the study of biology over forty years ago into the field of psychoanalysis and was influenced by August Aichhorn and Anna Freud; he has taken into account Margaret Mahler's theories as well as those of many others.
The book has nineteen papers arranged into six sections. The first five sections cover an overview of adolescents and their environment, normal stages of male and female adolescence, acting out and delinquency, psychic structure and body image. Each section has an introduction. The final section is a summary of the author's contributions to the psychoanalytic theory of adolescence.
Perhaps the most meaningful of his contributions is the idea of a second individuation process of adolescence, encompassing a reworking of the original pre-oedipal and oedipal stages. This process is a continuation of the earlier process. Blos states he does not see a resolution of the oedipal conflict in the early years, but rather a suspension of it through the latency years, and a revival at the onset of puberty. The adolescent needs to regres