ABSTRACT
Rosalie Joffe's analysis of her work in this context provides many vital insights into the state of mind of these unhappy adolescents and helpful guidelines for those who hope to protect them while they are travelling on this dangerous road. The chapter explores further the issues surrounding the significance of the setting as a factor in supporting the therapist's work and the patient's sense of containment, it also brings one sharply in touch with the extremes of confusion and despair that can overtake young people as they struggle to find a way out of conflict and inner loneliness. In the analysis of these young people, we have come to recognize danger signs such as their vulnerability to holidays and weekends, which confirm their unlovableness. Adolescents may feel compelled to reject people help because of fear of dependency. Dependency may be experienced as the wish for passive early childhood body-care, which in adolescence has become linked with sexual perversion and incest.
