This book critically examines the circumstances surrounding the failure of rites of passage in U.S. society and its relationship with the mental health crisis overtaking youth in America today.

The book develops a Freudian understanding of rites of initiation and the larger social link, based on Freud’s psychoanalytic myths read through a Lacanian lens. It further surveys the deterioration of common civil identifications in the United States, the advancement of consumer capitalism in the late 20th century, and the development of social media in the 21st century as each composing a tectonic shift destabilizing the traditional function of the rite of initiation. As a result, adolescents today have no reliable method of entering the social link through symbolic identification, nor the ability to use it to bind their libido. The book traces the clinical consequences of this failure to the recent waves of mass psychogenic illness in adolescents, the rocketing increase in psychiatric hospitalizations, and the dramatic rise in suicidal thoughts and behaviours in the past years. It also offers possible pathways forward for both adolescents and psychoanalytic clinicians working with them.

Drawing on multiple psychoanalytic schools of thought and clinical experience, this book is a vital resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and clinicians working with adolescents.