ABSTRACT
Anna Freud’s (1958) claim that turmoil is normative in adolescence has blurred the distinction between healthy and pathological development for too long. Offer’s research (Offer, 1969; Offer and Offer, 1975), which refuted the concept of normative adolescent turmoil, has never been integrated into psychoanalytic theory. Further, the ferment characterizing contemporary psychoanalysis, the explosion of relational theories, and the exciting findings of attachment studies and other developmental research have barely found their way into psychoanalytic theorizing about adolescence, at least in part due to the privileged place of “adolescent turmoil” in developmental theory. Thus, there is the paradox that psychotherapy with adolescents, widely viewed as the most freewheeling area of psychotherapeutic work, is also the last bastion of psychoanalytic drive-structural theory.
