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A specific developmental arrest at the separation-individuation stage is used as a working theoretical framework for approaching diagnosis, dynamics, and treatment of the borderline syndrome in adolescents. The syndrome evolves along the following lines. The mother, often suffering from a borderline syndrome herself, cannot support and encourage the child's separation-individuation and evokes feelings of abandonment and depression in the child as he achieves some separation with growth. He thus clings to the mother and produces pathologic defenses to protect against awareness of such feelings. These defenses intensity as further separation demands confront the child, either through external experience such as loss of important objects, or through the renewed maturational demands for separation-individuation at prepuberty. The case of an acting out adolescent is used to illustrate this thesis. Treatment is divided into three phases: containment of acting out behavior in a hospital setting, during which the patient tests the therapist's capacity to understand and care for him; the subsequent establishment of a therapeutic alliance with words replacing actions as a means of working