Technical issues in adolescent analysis. A Jamesian view

When adolescent patients come to analysis with an intermingling of neurotic and developmental disturbances, the analyst's technique cannot rely solely on interpretive methods. I use two examples to illustrate alternate interventive approaches: the first is taken from the dialogue of a fictional relationship between two characters in Henry James's novel The Ambassadors, and the second is selected from excerpts of an analysis with an adolescent boy. The strategies suggested aim to destabilize anachronistic mental percepts, connect representations of the self in the present with wished-for images of the self in the future, and join split-off affects and representations of self and others.