ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part considers not only the highly deprived backgrounds of some of the young people who present for help, but also the way their expectations and the consequent pressures on them have changed. Adolescence as a stage of life, and the adolescent process that drives it—a qualitatively distinctive state of mind—calls for interventions that manage to respect the young person’s striving towards independence and the regressive pull of childhood longings that mobilizes infantile anxieties. For example, irrespective of social background, nowadays most pre-pubescent children who live in urban areas dress and act more like adolescents. A kind of pseudo-sexuality is encouraged through social media and consumer culture, such that the very experience of the body and hence of sexuality has been redefined.
