ABSTRACT
In our psychoanalytic treatment of adolescents we have frequently been faced with the need to deal with specific actions or acting-out behaviors that have endangered patients’ lives or have at least placed them in serious danger of harming themselves—for example, extensive drug taking, attempted suicide, becoming pregnant, or actions that could result in legal proceedings with consequences such as imprisonment or compulsory admission to a psychiatric hospital. Colleagues who treat adolescents psychoanalytically have confirmed that such behaviors are not at all uncommon during the treatment of seriously disturbed adolescents. In certain circumstances, they may mean that the psychoanalyst must do something about the behavior lest the adolescent actually be endangered. In less serious circumstances, the treatment may end as the result of certain actions.
