This powerful essay defines adolescent psychopathology, no matter what the symptomatology, as the breakdown in adolescent development functions. The pathology specifically interferes with the "integration of the sexually mature body as part of the body image." The psychopathology tends to begin at puberty when ultimate differentiation into male and female must take place. The author recommends more frequent, intense treatment (i.e., more sessions per week, a more analytic approach) the more severe the functional breakdown is. He adds that the younger adolescent is still too tied to efforts to free himself or herself from the oedipal parent and that more effective analytic efforts can occur later when the patient is sixteen to nineteen years old. Laufer strongly believes that the only true reversal of the pathologic process comes through the revival and working through in the transference of the patient's hatred and rejection of his or her mature sexuality.