Insults from an adolescent daughter are more painful, because they are seen as coming not from a child who lashes out impulsively,who has moments of intense anger and of negative feelings which are not integrated into that large body of responses, impressions and emotions we call 'our feelings for someone,' but instead they are coming from someone who is seen to know what she does.

Adolescence has been recognised as a stage of human development since medieval times--long, long before the industrial revolution--and, as it is now, has long been seen as a phase which centers on the fusion of sexual and social maturity. Indeed, adolescence as a concept has as long a history as that of puberty, which is sometimes considered more concrete, and hence much easier to name and to recognize.

Adolescents swing from euphoric self-confidence and a kind of narcissistic strength in which they feel invulnerable and even immortal, to despair, self-emptiness, self-deprecation. At the same time they seem to see an emerging self that is unique and wonderful, they suffer an intense envy which tears narcissism into shreds, and makes other people's qualities hit them like an attack of lasers.

This is the hope of many adolescent girls--to capture a parent's heart with love for them as they are, as people. They reject thenotion of being loved just because they are the child of the parent. They want the parent to fall in love with them all over again, because being new, they deserve a new love.

The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother--both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child's history is never finished.

We may be aware of small increments of getting older; we may meet an increasing number of people who make us uneasy with their youth; but the fact of being old ourselves comes as a surprise, and is often accompanied by the belief that there has been some mistake.

Adolescents do get very angry with their parents, and acknowledging this anger is part of acknowledging them. If the anger is notacknowledged then its expression is increased. The parent seems super-strong. The adolescent tries to become the super-attacker.