Margot Waddell is a psychoanalyst and consultant child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. She has written extensively on adolescence, including work on groups, gangs and scapegoating.

• Series editors' preface -- Foreword to the second edition -- Author's note -- A historical note -- Introduction -- States of mind -- Beginnings -- Infancy: containment and reverie -- Infancy: defences against pain -- Early childhood: weaning and separation -- Latency -- Models of learning -- The family -- Puberty and early adolescence -- Mid-adolescence: a clinical example -- Late adolescence: fictional lives -- The adult world -- "The later years" -- The last years -- Appendix