ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a constellation of emotional factors that have been observed in a number of psychotic and borderline adolescents. In the internal world of these adolescents, the mother was unable to contain her child's emotional experience, whereas the father was rejecting and at times cruel. The chapter discusses the psychotherapy of three adolescent patients: "Debbie", "Tarda" and "Thomas". For each of these adolescents, progress in the therapy depended on providing them with a combination of containment and firm limit-setting corresponding to a robust parental couple. Since they had internalized an inadequate parental couple, Debbie, Tania, and Thomas were unable to cope with the anxieties that arose from their oedipal phantasies. The psychotherapy of these three disturbed adolescents has essentially been concerned with containing their extreme anxieties and in this way gradually helping them to resolve their psychotic confusion.
