ABSTRACT
A large part of the clinician's work with adolescents continues to involve assessment and diagnosis. Differential diagnosis reveals a multifaceted procedure in which data is collected from an array of external and internal sources, and is then ordered into a conceptual schema designed to generate a profile or comprehensive composite representative of a syndrome or disorder. The clinician has to rely on direct and indirect sources of material with which to facilitate an ongoing, oscillating, inductive-deductive process that should suggest what the problem is and what can be done about it in order to facilitate optimal developmental functioning.
