ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by describing a range of psychoanalytic theories of depression. It considers the importance of looking at depression in the context of adolescent development. The chapter offers a psychoanalytic formulation of some of the underlying psychodynamic processes and factors that are likely to make some adolescents vulnerable to depression and to suffer ongoing depression. Young people whose sense of self is fragile and insecurely founded might thus be expected to find the adolescent task of individuation extremely daunting and therefore to have an increased vulnerability to states of depression. Conflict is inherent to human existence but is particularly intense during adolescence, especially with respect to adult authority figures, and often linked to depressive symptoms. Psychoanalysts writing about adolescence have stressed its importance as the time during which the young person consolidates his or her own independent identity.
