Francois Ladame is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, former President of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society. He is Head of the Units for Adolescents and Young Adults, Department of Psychiatry, Geneva University Hospitals, and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva. Maja Perret-Catipovic is a psychologist and psychotherapist. She is in charge of the Unit for Suicide Prevention and Research (Units for Adolescents and Young Adults, Department of Psychiatry, Geneva University Hospitals) and is a lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Geneva

'This excellent collection of classical and contemporary essays makes a major contribution to the easement of psychoanalytic understanding and treatment of adolescents. The Editors have produced a valuable teaching text, bringing together some of the major statements by the pioneers and by a number of modern European students of the field. They are to be congratulated on having assembled a volume which will be of great service to students and practitioners everywhere.'- Aaron H. Esman, M.D.'Here finally is a collection of the most important Psychoanalytic articles on adolescents together with key contributions from adolescent specialists from the continent making one of the most rounded presentations of the subject available today.'- Professor Peter Fonagy'It is refreshing, in this era of biological psychiatry, that there remains centers where psychoanalysis is alive and well. Perret-Catipovic and Ladame have rendered an invaluable service to the continuing study of adolescent development by laying out, via this collection of both classical papers and contemporary re-syntheses, one of the pillars for our psychological understanding of the most fascinating stage of life. As a brief and eminently readable compilation, distinctly Freudian and notably European, this small gem deserves its place in the library of every serious student of adolescence.'- Michael G. Kalogerakis, MD, President International Society for Adolescent Psychiatry'The authors have produced an extremely useful and comprehensive book which enables the reader to gain a clear view of the psychoanalytically based development phases of adolescence. A particularly valuable aspect of the work is the way in which it attempts to describe and differentiate between the normal adolescent upheaval which ultimately leads to new levels of relationship and maturity, and processes which point towards later pathology. It is a 'must' for all those who work with adolescents.'- Anne Marie Sandler

• Preface -- Adolescence and psychoanalysis: the story of the history -- The transformations of puberty -- Adolescence -- On adolescence -- The second individuation process of adolescence -- A note on the crisis of adolescence: from disappointment to conquest -- The central masturbation fantasy, the final sexual organization, and adolescence -- The pubertal, its sources and fate -- The process of becoming-a-subject in adolescence -- Normality and pathology in adolescence