ABSTRACT
Adolescence is an inevitable developmental continuation of the latency period. After the dramas of the oedipal phase—a time when a child is negotiating his relationship with both mother and father—”latency” provides respite, a period in which psychosexual development and emotional maturation continue in a much more muted vein and in which the acquisition of cognitive and motor skills, and the capacity to go beyond the family into a world of peer relationships, is the predominant developmental task. With adolescence, there is a return to earlier dramas, which are re-worked within the context of a developing sexual body.
