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The task of understanding and nurturing today's adolescents is monumental. Derek Miller surveys the complexities involved and the need for many societal structures to accomplish such a task. As in the first years of life, emotional maturation in adolescence involves a crucial metamorphosis into individuation, a biopsychosocial process which can delay or founder if earlier maturational or genetic deficits are misunderstood or mishandled, or if the needed environmental structures are missing or destructive, as is so often the case.
Miller has given himself the task of helping the reader begin to perceive the dynamics of adolescent problem behavior in many social contexts, from the family to larger institutions, and in different modes of treatment, from various types of psychotherapy to the use of drugs. As his title suggests, he is sensitive to the emotional needs and therefore to the value of the defenses of adolescents. For example, describing an approach to the initial interview, he notes: “The therapist's general attitude here should be that he or she would like to be useful [as opposed to helpful], as the idea of being helped is often felt by young people as infantilizing.” I found particularly valuable his analysis of the inadequacies of many institutional approaches. High schools, for example, if they “have more than 500 to 600 pupils,… cannot become significant organizations with which young people can identify… As teachers change yearly and adolescent groups change for each class