ABSTRACT

Exploring adolescent difficulties with a view to possible therapeutic treatment involves attempting to engage a troubled, and often confused, individual in beginning to think; to think in a very specific and probably unfamiliar way. Beginning to think can itself be a frightening process. It necessitates learning about oneself. ‘… they all hate learning’, says the psychoanalyst in Bion’s final Memoir ‘it makes them develop – swell up’ (1979, p. 8), pregnant, that is, with a new idea, a new birth/thought in the mind.