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Was shaw accurate in saying, “Youth is wasted on the young?” His observation reflects envy of youth and perhaps a tendency to idealize youth and young adulthood as a carefree time of energy, sexuality, joy, freshness, and experimentation. These elements are present, but as we know from clinical analytic experience as well as from some of the studies about young adulthood, it is also a time of much travail and vulnerability. If it is true that this is a time of vulnerability, how is this explained when young adulthood is seen through all the literature as a time of psychic consolidation? Why all the recent attention to young adults and to young adulthood as a phase? Is there anything different or special about this time of life and about the analysis of young adults?
In this paper I attempt to respond to these questions. I consider the implications of the young adult's vulnerability and the developmental vicissitudes as they impinge upon the analytic process, especially in terms of the questions of resistance versus maturation, and regression and transference in the face of consolidation and new