You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
ANNA FREUD (1958) AND JEANNE LAMPL-DE GROOT (1960) SEPARATELY note the lack of attention devoted to adolescent reconstruction in adult analyses both in analytic practice and in the analytic literature. In fact, at a 1979 discussion of analytic reconstruction, only scant reference was made to the need for reconstructive activities to be devoted to adolescence. One may ask why there is a lack of attention to reconstruction of this important developmental phase, particularly since psychoanalysis from the beginning has directed attention to the impact of earlier experience on adult neurosis. One may also ask why analytic attention should be focused on this difficult developmental phase. Excerpts from an analysis in which adolescent reconstruction played an important role in providing a window through which analyst and analysand could begin to piece together the nature of her infantile experience will be presented. These clinical data will support the thesis that analytic reconstruction of adolescent experience (1) can provide a window through which earlier history may be meaningfully approached; (2) develops an increasingly meaningful and convincing sense of the reality of the analysand's neurotic repetitions and psychic contents; and (3) adds an important new dimension in understanding the adult neurosis through the analysis of the new achievement in adolescence of the final sexual organization (Laufer, 1976).