ABSTRACT

The concern with adolescent breakdown, the central theme of this book, must certainly be shared by anybody who has contact with the troubled adolescent. Those of us who work with the adolescent—whether at school, at a youth club, in the doctor’s surgery, or in an institution—are certainly aware of how vital our relationship to the adolescent may be. But, in spite of this, we are also prone to finding ways of explaining away the presence of serious signs of existing or impending trouble, with the hope that the adolescent will grow out of it, or with the belief that it might be more constructive to let things be rather than to create a crisis. At the same time, we all know that mental breakdown, and certainly mental illness, is a dreadful human tragedy that frightens all of us. But our present knowledge of the mind does enable us to say that many severe mental disorders and breakdowns can be prevented if we act early enough and if that 76action is based on the belief that mental breakdown does not come from out of the blue, but that it has a very specific meaning in the person’s life.