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The purpose of this paper is to clarify and extend the psychoanalytic theory of adolescence. Three sources of data are used: biographical source material about Freud's adolescence, introspective accounts from the self-analysis of psychoanalysts, and other biographical vignettes and reports from the psychoanalytic literature. It is proposed that a change in the self emerges as the pivotal focus during adolescent development. An intense peer relationship serves to maintain narcissistic balance and the cohesion of the self. This allows deidealization of archaic parental imagoes and their transformation into newly internalized idealizations. The newly acquired idealizations consolidate into a stable ego ideal which eliminates the need for an alter ego relationship. The self-objects chosen for these new idealizations are related to the need to overcome specific disappointments in the archaic self-objects. The stability of the new ideals depends on the invulnerability of the idealized self-objects. Transient states of narcissistic disequilibrium manifest as "turmoil."

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Classical psychoanalytic theory has a paranoid strain. There is, in effect, an "evil other"--the id--within each individual that must be tamed in development and confronted and worked through as resistance in treatment. This last has historically endgendered an adversarial relationship between patient and analyst. This paranoid strain came from a paranoid element in Freud's personality that affected his worldview, his relationships, and his theory. Self psychology offers a different view of development and conflict. It stresses the child's need for responsiveness from and admiration of caretakers in order to develop a well-functioning self. Though severe behavioral and character problems may result from faults in the process of self-construction, the essential need is not instinctual discharge but connection. Hence the long-assumed opposition between individual needs and social institutions or between patient and analyst is no longer inevitable or universal. Rather, an understanding of the primary need for connection creates both a different interpretive stance and a more cooperative ambience. These changes in theory and technique are traced to Kohut's personal struggles to emancipate himself from his paranoid mother.