From their experiences in work with adolescents at the Payne-Whitney Clinic in New York, the authors feel that there is a significant difference between those adolescents having true psychiatric disorder and those whose disturbance is transient. Of the relatively healthy group they state that 'although they may have mild character disorder traits or psychoneurotic symptoms these latter tend to be single rather than multiple, of mild intensity, episodic rather than persistent, and not to impair functioning'. They do not feel that the usual turmoil of adolescence in any way simulates psychiatric illness.