This article studies the detachment of adolescents from parental authority, an event which may be of critical importance in cases of depressive illness. Etiological factors & therapeutic considerations of adolescent depression are explained in psychoanalytic terms. Self-destructive tendencies may be provoked by frustration arising from external events experienced masochistically as being caused by the self & serve a need for self-punishment & punishment of the frustrating, abandoning object. RM