Part IV focuses on psychopathological processes during adolescence and on factors that may influence such processes. Adolescence has long been considered to be a period of particular developmental change and challenge. The chapters in this part offer the reader both a useful macroscopic theoretical perspective on the developmental psychopathology of adolescence and more specific consideration of possible factors in the development of individual disorders.

The initial chapter by Aaron T. Ebata, Anne C. Petersen, and John J. Conger uses knowledge of normative adolescent development to provide an excellent overview of prominent theoretical issues concerning psychopathological processes during adolescence. The authors highlight prevalent myths about adolescent psychopathology, such as the belief that psychopathological disturbances are normative and necessary during adolescence. Further, they urge that consideration of adolescent development include not only individual maturational processes but also specific social-context factors and dynamic transactions between the individual and the social environment. Ebata, Petersen, and Conger emphasize that adolescent psychopathological development can be usefully viewed as representing extreme poles on continuous dimensions of emotional development. This view leads to consideration of specific forms of psychopathology as differing patterns of adaptation that are negative deviations from the individual's developmental trajectory, products of interactions between the individual's adaptive coping skills and the changing social context.

Jack Block and Per F. Gjerde present data from a large-scale study that used one of the most direct methods of assessing developmental trajectory and precursors of psychopathology: the longitudinal follow-through design. This method is one that Norman Garmezy often has emphasized as critical to developmental psychopathology (Garmezy, 1971; Garmezy & Streitman, 1974).