Problems in the psychoanalytically-oriented treatment of young male adolescents are discussed. Treatment vignettes of three youngsters illustrate the difficulties

but also the necessity of interpreting the decisive role of the parent-child relationship to adolescents who deny the importance of the parents. The author shows how the defense of intellectualization can be used to enhance the therapeutic alliance and how transference interpretation can be used to mitigate homosexual panic. Sexual problems are dealt with according to the religiouscultural milieu of the youngster. Although the Israeli sociocultural milieu gives specific coloring to problems past and present, family relations are the main universal etiological factors.