ABSTRACT
Adolescence offers the possibility of reworking some of earliest conflicts. The hormonal changes in the body lead to a redefinition of the young person's sense of self and identity. The new sexualized body gives immediate reality to the possibility of intercourse and reproduction, thereby remembering and making possible the taboo of incest and, at best, promoting some degree of resolution of the Oedipus complex. The author presents some clinical work; he has done with three young adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15, who were locked in a state of depression: they just "hated life", as one of them succinctly put it. The work was undertaken under the auspices of the Childhood Depression Project. All three young people (Sarah, Samantha, and Michael) had been diagnosed by the Project researchers as depressed, some with dysthymia, some with "double depression", both conditions being recognized as very difficult to treat.
