ABSTRACT
Adolescence and psychoanalysis: both of these terms are the victims of their own success. The word "adolescent" was used in a disparaging sense at the end of the nineteenth century, and nowadays everything is readily dismissed as "adolescent". As for "psychoanalysis", the term has emerged from a circle of initiates into everyday—perhaps too everyday—parlance, where it now punctuates all forms of humanistic discourse. In view of their success, might these words not be said to have lost their meaning?
