This paper questions the conception of adolescence as a necessary crisis universally triggered by puberty, as has been held by psychoanalysis from the developmental perspective. Based on history and on Freud's works, a distinction cam be made between the adolescent as chronologically and sociologically determined, and the impasse of adolescence, which is based on the subject of the unconscious, the sole concern of psychoanalysis.
adolescence; puberty; individual; crisis