From Adolescent to Adult: By Percival M. Symonds with Arthur R. Jensen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. 413 pp.

This volume is an interesting contribution to an almost wholly neglected subject, the transformation of adolescent into adult. Forty adolescents were studied in 1940 by means of interviews and the Picture-Story Test (reported in Symonds's Adolescent Fantasy, Columbia University Press, 1949). In 1953, twenty-eight of the forty—now men and women of twenty-five to thirty-one years of age—were again studied by the same means with addition of the Rorschach Test. Even though the group is small and the interviews necessarily superficial, the results are striking. Adolescents' fantasies are found to be remarkably resistant to change; in fact, it proved possible to match the fantasies of 1953 with those of 1940 from the same subject simply by taking note of style and content. Such change as does occur results from the fact that expression of a fantasy in real life diminishes need for indulgence in the fantasy. (Symonds defines fantasy as the unfinished business of the psyche—an exact enough definition, apparently, of the daydream or the fantasy produced in response to the Picture-Story Test but scarcely applicable to true unconscious fantasy; these terms need to be clarified.) For example, the person who remains at home without marrying is likely to continue his adolescent fantasies of revolt; others are not. Adult fantasies tend more toward depression and guilt while those of adolescence express more violence and aggression and the theme of tricking other people. Emphasis on masculine identification diminishes in the fantasy of men as they become mature adults. Fantasies in