Adolescents in Crisis

Adolescents in Crisis offers a psychoanalytic perspective on the difficulties 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 develop and grow up, alongside the concurrent urge to regress towards a 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. These are often used as defense strategies against feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy that puberty can trigger. 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.

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.

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 adolescent's 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