Moses Laufer, Egle Laufer: psychoanalysis at adolescence

The authors claim that psychoanalysis is the best treatment for severely ill adolescents. Their approach is centered on the developmental breakdown having taken place after puberty transformations leading to a pathological state. Such a breakdown prevents the adolescent from integrating gradually the sexually mature body in his psychological reality, thus conditioning a breakdown in his relationship to reality. These adolescents behave in a defensive psychotic behaviour without its being a true and definite psychosis. The developmental breakdown were to be re-lived along the analysis in the form of a ÇÊtransference breakdownÊÈ offered to severely ill adolescents.