This study of a twenty-one-year-old female patient, in whom the usual deviant behavior in adolescence was absent, is used to illustrate Heinz Hartmann's propositions regarding the adaptive value of psychic phenomena and, in particular, his concept that regressive processes can also have an adaptive significance. Granted that the pathological behavior of adolescence is to be considered a prerequisite for successful development, two types of pathology must be considered: an extreme rigidity and hypertrophy in one or another direction of behavior and an absence of the usual adolescent upheavals.

This patient developed a severe pathological state during treatment which Geleerd considered a distorted equivalent of a delayed adolescent crisis. Symptoms of depression and schizophrenic features predominated during an analytically