ABSTRACT
Work with adolescents is a very complex, multi-faceted task which arouses great anxiety. Adolescent processes render the task particularly challenging. Adolescence needs to be viewed as a clearly defined transitional state with its own specific developmental path. Psychodynamic theory suggests that adolescence is a time in which conflicts and anxieties that were experienced as a young child, at the end of the second year of life, can be worked through in a new way. For adolescents in the care system, this is especially important as it is likely they have experienced many past emotional difficulties. Adolescents in care are likely to have suffered serious impingements on their early psychological development and their adolescent anxieties and conflicts are likely to be much the greater. Adolescent young people feel very anxious about their rapidly changing bodies, or repress the feeling if it is too strong. Homosexual feelings in adolescence may bring feelings of embarrassment, shame, guilt and confusion.
