ABSTRACT
The richness and variety of growth and development during adolescence defy even a cursory survey of the challenges and opportunities for affect maturation. Therefore, I shall discuss only one aspect of affect development during adolescence—adolescence as a time when the ability to grieve can develop. Giving up both the infantile attachment to the parents and the attachment to childhood self-representations, as exclusive of adult self-representations, represents the largest single task of adolescence. This accomplishment not only permits the adolescent to choose new love objects rather than resorting to displacement of incestuous yearnings, but also represents a point of maturation in affects (Katan, 1951; Zetzel, 1965; Wolfenstein, 1966).
