ABSTRACT
Certain adolescents who, although eager to come for treatment, find it almost impossible to take an active part in reversing their existing psychopathology. We are not referring to those adolescents who have experienced a developmental breakdown at puberty and whose treatment predictably includes a range of problems and crises that may seriously jeopardize the continuation of treatment. Instead, we refer to adolescents whose pathology seems to have a different course and outcome. We have in mind those who come to treatment with a pathology that is much more defined and “complete.” For them the developmental process of adolescence not only has been interfered with as the result of the breakdown at puberty but has come to a premature end, which is signified by a structured and less reversible, even irreversible, pathology.
