The preparation of this issue proposed by Paola Carbone on trauma and accidents during adolescence has had a long period of incubation that created a network of exchanges. First of all it produced an unusual editorial event (what authors treat such a specific and dramatic theme?) Secondly, a network of research (clinicians, theorists, and students exchanged pertinent information and questions), and ultimately creative communication and contacts (the large number of competent, courageous researchers with narrative capabilities in this field created dense and warm exchanges).

The painful theme of this issue paradoxically, had a regenerating effect on the curators, the authors and the editorial staff, so much so that we could even go as far as saying we sowed the seeds of knowledge, bonds and reparative hopes, and above all we were able to see a dimension of experience (the adolescent condition) recognised and individuated, not an occasional or a chronological dimension, but one that is part of the nucleus of subjectivity and the process of ‘subjectivization’: part of that field of shared elements of the group to which we belong.

The emotion of life prevailed on that of accidents and risks.

We hope that the group of readers relive this same emotion and we hope that reflection on the social conditions of young people will help us to think, to live emotionally and to understand, and that all this will benefit that group of young people.

I wish to thank Paola Carbone; the authors; Giorgia Morgese, Alessandra Fioravanti and Alessandra Sansalone for their collaboration to this issue and for proposing ‘The Fall of Icarus’ by Matisse for the front cover. Also I wish to thank Claudio Neri for his constant direction, Walter Iacobelli for the layout and Francesca Vasta for her letter to the readers announcing this issue.

Furthermore I would like to announce with the coming out of this issue: Reflections on the adolescent group with particular reference to trauma and accidents, two reviews by Savina Cordiale and Raffaella Girelli have been published in the Review Column of Funzione Gamma on Paola Carbone’s book:  Le ali di Icaro. Capire e prevenire gli incidenti dei giovani, (Le Ali di Icaro. How to understand and prevent  accidents in the adolescent age).