In The Adolescent Psyche, Richard Frankel offers a unique perspective into the impact of contemporary culture on the adolescent psyche and provides guidelines for those working with adolescents. Frankel advocates a new orientation to the theory and practice of adolescent psychotherapy using a conglomeration of Jungian and Winnicottian ideology. Although Jung rarely wrote about adolescents, his concept of individuation, or striving toward self-actualization, constitutes the crux of Frankel's approach. With his focus on the teleological significance of adolescent development, Frankel seeks to erode the common reductionistic approach often used to understand and treat adolescents

In the first section of the book, Frankel describes three primary directions of orientation for formulating a psychological theory of