ABSTRACT
Teenagers’ diffi culties seem rather different to the problems faced by adults. Young people are still evolving their sense of themselves and others, and of how the world is, and are very open to feedback from the outside. It is as though they are creating their adult carapace or tough outer shell-and until this is formed they are very open and vulnerable to their own experiences and sensations, and to events and individuals around them. Even using our ‘retrospectoscopes’, we can’t readily recapture the heightened emotions of adolescence. Those who kept frank diaries during their adolescence may be surprised, when they read them later in life, by the intensity and life-and-death importance attached to the interactions and events of this time.
