Adolescence and the Reorganization of Infant Development: A Neuro-Psychoanalytic Model

Abstract

The psychoanalytic view of adolescence as a phase of turbulence and reorganization occupied a central position in child and adolescent psychiatry until about 1980. The view of adolescence as a silent-transition phase then prevailed and diverged from the psychoanalytic perspective. This article reviews infant and adolescent development using an interdisciplinary, neuro-psycho-analytic model in which psychoanalytic, neurobiological, and developmental perspectives converge and complement each other.