Prologue

What accounts for the increasing attention psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals are focusing today on young adults? Many factors contribute to this upsurge of interest. As the moratorium needed by some adolescents before taking on adult responsibilities and career choices (Erikson, 1956) has been stretched with more time spent in college, graduate school, and postdoctoral training, society has become increasingly aware of a group identified as “young adults.” A population growth in this age span has also compelled us to be mindful of this phase. Student health units in colleges have been organized to deal with the stressful psychological demands upon students; psychiatric consultation and treatment services have expanded. Over the last five to ten years, psychiatric facilities have opened special units in mental and general hospitals devoted to treating those in the 18 to 25 period of life. Increasing numbers of chronically mentally ill young adults reside in hospitals. Many others congregate near hospitals or university centers, often unemployed or working sporadically — and frequently alcohol and substance abusers. In addition, the increase in suicide in the young adult period has been startling. Among 15-to 24-year-olds, the rate has more than doubled since 1961. The vulnerability of young people in this period is further indicated by the high incidence of narcissistic and borderline personality disorders and severe eating dysfunctions.

All these developments draw our concern and interest to the young adult. As psychoanalytic developmental theory has expanded, moving in its exploration and conceptualizations both to infants and to the adult, mid-life and older adult years, psychoanalysts increasingly regard development as a lifelong process. Young adulthood has come to be seen as a specific phase, a developmental