Puberty is a time of tumultuous transition from childhood to adulthood activated by rapid physical changes, hormonal development and explosive activity of neurons. This book explores puberty through the parent-teenager relationship, as a "normal state of crisis", lasting several years and with the teenager oscillating between childlike tendencies and their desire to become an adult. The more parents succeed in recognizing and experiencing these new challenges as an integral, ineluctable emotional transformative process, the more they can allow their children to become independent. In addition, parents who can also see this crisis as a chance for their own further development will be ultimately enriched by this painful process. They can face up to their own aging as they take leave of youth with its myriad possibilities, accepting and working through a newfound rivalry with their sexually mature children, thus experiencing a process of maturity, which in turn can set an example for their children. This book is based on rich clinical observations from international settings, unique within the eld, and there is an emphasis placed by the author on the role of the body in self-awareness, identity crises and gender construction. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, parents and carers, as well as all those interacting with adolescents in self, family and society.

IntroductionI. The Body Ego1.1 The Body as an Object of Observation1.2 The Body as a Medium of ProtestII. Psychosexual Development in Puberty2.1 The Mother-Baby Pair as Model for Romantic Love2.2 Flaming up of Oedipal Desires2.3 Daydreams with Oedipal Themes2.4 Masturbation and Masturbation Fantasies2.5 Working Through Themes from Early Childhood and Puberty in Art2.6 Adolescents in TherapyIII. Development of Feeling3.1 Problems for Parents of Children Growing into Puberty3.2 Effects on the Parental PsycheIV. Development of Thinking4.1 The Capacity for Abstract Thought According to PiagetV. The Search for Self-IdentityVI. Lost by the Wayside-Overstepping Limits6.1 Violent Adolescents: Violence as Fascination and Denial6.2 Violence as a Direct Way to Paradise -- the Fascination of the Jihad6.3 The Problems of Teenage Pregnancy6.4 Psychic Breakdown in Adolescence6.5 Thoughts of Suicide-Suicide AttemptsVII. Epilogue

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