The Importance of Diagnosis and Treatment of the Disorders of Adolescence

Extract

The problem of puberty can be regarded as the problem of functional psycho-somatic disharmony. The solution cannot lie exclusively in the field of mind or of body, because we are dealing not solely with psychic structures which are undergoing reshaping in their own right, but with the processes of maturation in the somatic field. The vector of normal growth lies somewhere within the parallelogram of these two forces. On this analogy, the presence of negative agencies must be stressed when we consider the repressive forces of the mind, and the return to primitive physiological responses as in schizophrenic reactions.