Some Aspects of Psychoanalytic Technique in Adolescence1

Since a complete discussion of psychoanalytic technique in adolescence is beyond the scope of a panel discussion, only a few isolated problems can be considered here. It seems profitable in any discussion on adolescence to determine which period of adolescence is referred to. Biologically, adolescence is estimated to run roughly from age twelve in girls and age thirteen in boys to age eighteen in both sexes. But there are considerable differences in personality structure between an early adolescent, schematically, from twelve to fourteen, the adolescent from fourteen to sixteen, or the late adolescent. It is obvious that the treatment procedure has to take these differences into account. In the three periods the adolescent is biologically as well as psychologically a very different human being. The adolescent reacts quite differently to his treatment in each of these periods, and thus the approach in the treatment must vary accordingly.

All analysts will agree that the treatment of the late latency and the early, almost preadolescent, child is one of the hardest tasks to undertake. This is the period in the life of the early teen-ager in which the group identification is intense, and the attachment to parental figures has been pushed altogether into the background. In this period the repression of the oedipal conflict has become most successful. At the same time preadolescent regression2 has set in, so that many of the learned reaction formations seem to fall