ABSTRACT
Where diagnosis is concerned, the adolescent age group really does need to be accorded its own specificity of reference and detail. The traditional wisdom of the Tavistock Clinic's Adolescent Department has always been that of the central importance of observing the realities of this state of liminality—that is, the frame space between two states: of being no longer a child, but not yet an adult either; a state in which previous identities are dissolved before new ones are formed. The types of developmental problems that can typify adolescence are familiar: self-hatred, anxiety, depression, manic enactment, internet addiction, self-harm, suicidal ideation, gender confusion— among so many others. But an adolescent alone knows the strange pain of growing into his own isolation of individuality. All this change is an agony and bliss. It is cataclysm and a new world. It is our most serious hour, perhaps.
