ABSTRACT
During the adolescent years there is a likelihood that, to both good and bad ends the projective tendencies will predominate over the introjective. The anxiety involved in a young person's attempts to discover who he is and to define more clearly his sense-of-himself-in-the-world often arouses extremes of defensive splitting and projection. The struggle towards an internal capacity for intimacy is what, in important ways, adolescence has been working towards all along. One of the main undertakings of adolescence is that of establishing a mind of one's own, a mind that is rooted in, and yet also at least partially distinct from, the sources and models of identification that are visible within one's family or in the wider school and community setting. The capacity to establish a deep and lasting relationship is dependent on the outcome of a number of complex internal processes that will, almost always, have been problematic and rewarding during the adolescent years.
