ABSTRACT
The intent of this chapter is to provide some commentary and observations about object relations functioning in adolescence in order to acquaint the reader with contemporary and historical thinking. Most of this, until recently, paid little accord to the fact that the adolescent period is a developmental stage wherein considerable object relations change and potential growth may still occur. There was, as Lamia (1982) observed, insufficient attention to the revision and modification of self and object representations in adolescence, and to the attendant relationship between the adolescent's self and object representations. In order to illustrate some of the more essential theoretical and clinical points it is helpful to begin with a metaphorical example followed by a clinical exposition.
