Parental and Peers Identifications During Adolescence

The purpose of the article is to integrate psychoanalytic knowledge on adolescence with the anthropological changes that have occurred in recent decades and that have had significant effects on the process of identity maturation. There is a shift in the mental center of gravity, from identifications with parents to the group of peers, which helps to address this detachment. The group of peers not only fosters ego capacities for collaboration and friendship but also elicits deep unconscious resonances. To illustrate the relationship established between childhood identifications with parents and the group of peers, the psychoanalytic therapy of an adolescent girl Silvia, victim of her classmates is reported.