ABSTRACT
Winnicott’s own adolescence was ended too soon by the start of the First World War, which saw him lose many friends. And now the fathers of these problem teenagers are those whose infancy and adolescence suffered from the events of the Second World War. When children come to adolescence, their parents can be driven to regress to their own adolescence, which reactivates unresolved psychic conflicts. The lifelong journey of the individual, driven by the process of maturation, passes through essential and structuring stages. Winnicott considers adolescent immaturity as something positive: it is a valuable element in the adolescent scene. Adolescence constitutes a moment for the reshuffling of infantile identities and offers a perspective towards new potentialities, potentialities which need to be faced and which define limits and choices. In Deprivation and Delinquency, Winnicott insists on the fact that: there exists only one real cure for adolescence: maturation.
