ABSTRACT
The central focus in adolescence is to find one’s place in the world, to discover who one is, which profession one will undertake and how one will live. The adolescent simultaneously both wishes and fears to become an adult. Puberty is a time of breakout and of loss – sometimes both simultaneously. The process of integrating divergent tendencies is always turbulent, especially when they break apart and the adolescent suffers a psychic breakdown or chooses self-destructive, anomalous behavior. In a certain sense, adolescence constitutes a kind of weaning, since an adolescent must give up fantasies of possessing the mother completely, just as moving out of the parental household signifies a loss of comfort and convenience.
