This paper explores some of Moses Laufer’s developments of Freudian ideas on puberty and adolescence. His concepts of developmental breakdown in adolescence and central masturbatory fantasy are discussed with emphasis on their clinical usefulness. The case of a young adult with a postponed adolescent breakdown is presented, in which an obsessive-delusional idea is seem as containing the derivatives of a central masturbatory fantasy.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°1, pp. 53-63.