Adolescents in Crisis offers a psychoanalytic perspective on the complex that can arise when young people renegotiate their relationship with the world and their own bodies as they experience puberty.
This edited collection explores the tension adolescents often experience between their wish to change and develop and their desire to lean into stasis to maintain their pre-pubescent way of relating to their own self and others. Covering the period from pre-teen years to the dawn of adulthood, and including clinical vignettes throughout, the contributors look at issues such as isolation, self-harm, eating disorders, gender identity and delinquent behaviors which are often used as defense strategies against the feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy that puberty can invoke. Each chapter draws on traditional and contemporary psychoanalytic thought to help the reader understand these anxieties and provide guidance on how the therapist, parent and adolescent can work through them together, allowing the young person to explore new ways of managing their anxieties.
Part of the 101 Kids books series, this book is an invaluable resource for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists working with young people, as well as teachers, social workers and parents dealing with adolescents in difficulty.
Adolescents in Crisis offers a psychoanalytic perspective on the complex that can arise when young people renegotiate their relationship with the world and their own bodies as they experience puberty.
List of contributors, Introduction,
1. Identity formation in
adolescence,
2. The devil and the deep blue sea: Gender stereotypes and the
problem of individuation,
3. Preadolescence: The silence of words and the
words of the body,
4. Growing up in digital times and the adolescents
experience of being in- a- body,
5. Leaving the shallow end for deeper
waters: Collaborative work with parents and adolescents,
6. Considering
concurrent work with parents of adolescent patients,
7. Reflections on eating
disorders in children and adolescents,
8. Aggressive and antisocial behaviour
in adolescence,
9. Assessing the risk of self-harm and suicide in
adolescence: A psychoanalytical perspective,
10. Adolescent breakdown:
Emanuela Quagliata in conversation with Eglé Laufer, Glossary, Index
Emanuela Quagliata is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst working in private practice in Rome, Italy. She teaches at the Tavistock- model trainings in Florence and at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Rome, she is Chair for Europe of the IPA Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis. Emanuela is the author of Becoming Parents and Overcoming Obstacles (2013) and, with Margaret Rustin, she is the editor of Assessment in Child Psychotherapy (2000).
Alessandra Marsoni is a London based Adolescent and Adult Psychotherapist working in private practice with children, adolescents, parents and adult patients. She worked in the Adolescent Department at the Tavistock Clinic in London where until recently she ran the Adolescent Workshop for the Child Psychotherapy training.
