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The work of adolescence is described as a genealogical event, as an anamorphosis of psychical containers involving both the individual and the family group. It is within this dynamic of co-construction that the crisis of adolescence is distinguished, as adolescence in crisis and adolescence-catastrophe. The author locates the importance of transmission within a psychoanalytical reading of bonds. Transmission is not communication. Its model of linking, unlinking and re-linking the genealogical containers establishes an isomorphie, that is a formal analogy among bonds, transmission, psychical containing, unconscious body-image and the construction of identity. There are two modes of psychical transmission: trace and imprint. The trace concerns the transmission of psychical content. The trace is inscription as a positive. The imprint is an incised inscription, a negative impression. It is this psychical family material, present-absent, not revealed, which has not been metabolized or symbolized and which is nevertheless transmitted from generation to generation. The imprint is not writing on a medium. It is the expression of a modification of the medium itself, like the imprint left by footsteps in the snow. The imprint is not the object. It signals the passage of an absent-present object. It has to do not with the content but with the container. An example of psychoanalytical family therapy illustrates the treatment of these adolescents who inherit and bear the genealogical imprint and the family’s unconscious shame.