ABSTRACT
In trying to be more precise about the contribution the period of adolescence makes to normal psychological development, we realized that we had to be precise not only about our definition of the structure of the psychopathologies in adolescence but also about how this structure differs from that of the neuroses, perversions, and psychoses of adulthood. Freud’s belief that perversion, for example, could not be defined as such until the person’s sexual orientation was fixed (1905, 162–72; 1919) made a great deal of sense to us when we applied this view initially to the organization of psychopathology during adolescence and later to the developmental function of adolescence. Although Freud chose perversion as his example, he had in mind the development of the person’s sexual orientation and the idea that the main means of gratification normally has a fixed and predictable pattern only by the end of adolescence. But he also considered it essential to show that the disorders in sexual life which are present before the main means of gratification has been established must be viewed and understood differently from those that exist afterward.
