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."

Unable to correlate clinical findings with contemporary neurophysiology, Freud tried to anchor psychoanalysis within biology through a speculative metapsychology. Recently, epistemological objections have led to abandonment of his proposals qua scientific theory, although many still use them metaphorically. Others deny the need for any general theory of mental functions. Some theorists would espouse a hermeneutic basis for psychoanalysis, outside the boundaries of biology; they purport to confine their purview to mental contents but often use concepts based on metapsychological assumptions. Because the meanings of such contents are difficult to determine, their interpretation should be "constructed" in collaboration with analysands. By contrast, trained observers may reliably collect psychobiological data, accumulating knowledge of cognition, affectivity, communication, and the regulation of behavior--matters Freud encompassed via the economic and structural viewpoints. Hence analytic theory should be correlated with the findings of semiotics, cognitive psychology, and brain science. The hermeneutic focus on dynamics and genetics overlooks crucial data, such as the occurrence of trauma, leading to confusion about processes of pathogenesis, working through, and structural change. These and other biological phenomena (such as functional deficits and repetitive enactments) call for interventions beyond interpreting mental contents; improvement depends on learning better to process these contents. Change implies gradual establishment of alternative neural pathways; this does not automatically follow insight. Hence psychoanalysis must deal with intrapsychic phenomena beyond subjectivity. Intrapsychic conflicts represent efforts to ward off archaic mentality (primitive thought processing). Theories divorced from neurocognitive considerations encourage the theoretical fiction that analysands possess an "intact ego."

Recently published reports about completed analyses conducted by competent students with expert supervision permit us to compare two contrasting clinical traditions within psychoanalysis, that proposed by Heinz Kohut over the past decade and a conservative point of view sharply focused on elucidation of derivatives of the infantile neurosis. Analytic treatment based on each set of these theoretical assumptions will achieve valuable results--very different in kind in each instance. On the other hand, elucidation of oedipal conflicts without working through their developmental antecedents leaves patients with a variety of adaptive deficits and severe subjective discomforts. Kohut's clinical system produces important improvements in tension regulation and in reorganizing behavior in a more coherent manner, but it neglects a variety of other issues stemming from the less archaic sectors of the personality. Theoretical inferences derived from observations made in the course of such incomplete analyses fail to carry scientific conviction.

Although Freud encoded the idea of "working through" as a mere metaphor, it served the essential role of designating the necessary activities of analyst and analysand that go beyond the elucidation of mental contents through interpretation. From a neurobiological viewpoint, these processes involve the establishment of new neural networks through gradual habituation. From the vantage point of cognition, this necessarily slow process amounts to learning new skills in communication, the mastery of mounting unpleasure, and the expansion of "referential activity." These considerations imply that the crux of analytic work is changing those biological functions we call thought processes, thereby improving the person's ability to regulate behavior adaptively. Thus, the interpretation of mental content is a byproduct of the analytic work--a result of clearer thinking, facilitated by identifying areas of primitive mentation and assisting analysands to expand their repertory of psychological skills. Only these intrapsychic changes in functional capacity will enable patients to reach the insight necessary for continuous adaptation through self-inquiry.

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