Today I will talk about the concept of adolescence in rather an “ideal” way, as though it were something which always happens in a calm and natural way leading towards adult life, mental health, happiness and so forth—trying to understand how this might be possible and whether it ever is. Tomorrow [Chapter 4] Mrs Harris will present a case of a girl in analysis in order to highlight the difficulties of adolescent psychopathology. The day after tomorrow [Chapter 5] I will talk about the vast field of adolescent psychopathology and the technical problems relating to the treatment of adolescents according to the psychoanalytic method.

First of all I believe it is important to point out that the psychoanalytic method is not particularly efficient for the investigation of adolescence in as much as adolescents live mostly in the external world of adolescents and are not naturally or comfortably in touch with adults. Our understanding of adolescence does not come so