Psychoanalytic Perspectives On Puberty And Adolescence

Puberty is a time of tumultuous transition from childhood to adulthood activated by rapid physical changes, hormonal development and explosive activity of neurons. This book explores puberty through the parent-teenager relationship, as a "normal state of crisis", lasting several years and with the teenager oscillating between childlike tendencies and their desire to become an adult. The more parents succeed in recognizing and experiencing these new challenges as an integral, ineluctable emotional transformative process, the more they can allow their children to become independent. In addition, parents who can also see this crisis as a chance for their own further development will be ultimately enriched by this painful process. They can face up to their own aging as they take leave of youth with its myriad possibilities, accepting and working through a newfound rivalry with their sexually mature children, thus experiencing a process of maturity, which in turn can set an example for their children. This book is based on rich clinical observations from international settings, unique within the field, and there is an emphasis placed by the author on the role of the body in self-awareness, identity crises and gender construction. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, parents and carers, as well as all those interacting with adolescents in self, family and society.

Puberty is a time of tumultuous transition from childhood to adulthood activated by rapid physical changes, hormonal development and explosive activity of neurons. This book explores puberty through the parent-teenager relationship, as a "normal state of crisis", lasting several years and with the teenager oscillating between childlike tendencies and their desire to become an adult. The more parents succeed in recognizing and experiencing these new challenges as an integral, ineluctable emotional transformative process, the more they can allow their children to become independent. In addition, parents who can also see this crisis as a chance for their own further development will be ultimately enriched by this painful process. They can face up to their own aging as they take leave of youth with its myriad possibilities, accepting and working through a newfound rivalry with their sexually mature children, thus experiencing a process of maturity, which in turn can set an example for their children. This book is based on rich clinical observations from international settings, unique within the field, and there is an emphasis placed by the author on the role of the body in self-awareness, identity crises and gender construction. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, parents and carers, as well as all those interacting with adolescents in self, family and society.

In the classic edition of this outstanding book, originally published in 1998, Richard Frankel explores adolescence as a crucial, unique, and turbulent period of human development. He provides guidance for clinicians working with young people as they undergo significant transformations in the way they think, act, feel, and perceive the world. The book addresses how the disruptions manifest in adolescent behavior are upsetting and often incomprehensible to the adults surrounding them. It seeks to revision the traumas, extreme fantasies, testing of limits, etc., so endemic to this period of life through the lens of the urge toward self-realization. This allows for new and creative ways of working with the intensely confusing, and often extreme, countertransference feelings that arise in our encounter with adolescents. It offers ways of reflecting upon the vicissitudes of our own experience of being an adolescent that helps to unlock the typical impasses that occur in the stand-off between adult and adolescent ways of seeing the world. Through engagement with the work of Jung, Hillman, and Winnicott, Frankel offers a critique of the traditional psychoanalytic understanding of adolescence as a recapitulation of childhood, thus making a claim for adolescence as a discrete developmental period with its own originary dynamics. In this light, he explores such topics as individuation, persona, shadow, bodily, idealistic and ideational awakenings, as well as the effects of culture on development. Featuring numerous clinical case studies and clear theoretical formulations, this classic edition is important reading for psychotherapists, analysts, parents, educators, and anyone working with adolescents. This classic edition also includes also includes a new, extended introduction by the author that examines what effects the digital revolution is having on the contemporary experience of being an adolescent. Looking back on this work nearly 25 years since its publication, Frankel contends that the core themes of adolescence addressed in this book offer a compelling framework for comprehending both the positive and negative impacts of the digital on adolescent life.

Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Adolescent Development: Non-Linear Perspectives on the Regulation of the Self explores how psychoanalysis can combine its theoretical perspectives with more recent discoveries about neurological and non-linear developmental processes that unfold during the period of puberty to young adulthood, to help inform understanding of contemporary adolescent behaviours and mental health issues. With the powerful impact of neuroscience research findings, opportunities emerge to create a new paradigm to attempt to organize specific psychoanalytic theories. Neurobiological regulation offers such an opportunity. By combining elements of domains of compatible knowledge into a flexible explanatory synergy, the potential for an intellectually satisfying theoretical framework can be created. In this work, Harold Bendicsen formulates a multi-disciplinary theoretical approach involving current research and drawing on neuroscience to consider the behaviour regulation processes of the mind/brain and the capacities and potential it brings to understanding the development of adolescents and young adults. Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Adolescent Development advances Bendicsen’s study of adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, begun in The Transformational Self. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as psychologists, clinical social workers, psychiatrists and counsellors.

A sensitive, gracefully written exploration of the distinctiveness of the female adolescent experience. The author combines insights drawn from her clinical practice with informed analyses of familiar works of literature. Her premise is that literature does not merely exemplify but deepens our understanding of psychological processes. "A brilliant and evocative analysis of the transition from girlhood to womanhood, with its longings, its pain, and the pride of growing up. The depiction is rich with the particularities of the experiences of adolescent girls, and provides a welcome contrast to the usual rendering of this period as a variation on male development."--Lila Braine, Chair, Department of Psychology, Barnard College "Masterful analyses of five literary works. . . . Dalsimer's interpretations are remarkable for the intelligent and informed acuity of her psychoanalytic observations as well as for their preservation of the texture of lived experience. A uniquely felicitous conjunction of psychoanalysis and literature."--Choice "Dalsimer's commentaries prove consistently empathetic, discerning, and convincing. . . . This beautifully writen book renders important service both to psychoanalysis and to literary studies."--Paul Schwaber, Professor of Letters, Wesleyan University "This book will be treasured by anyone who has taught or treated an adolescent girl, or read a book about one, or, like Freud and the rest of us, simply wondered at the miracle of transformation of a girl into a woman."--Robert Michels, M.D., Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College

'This book provides a powerfully argued and beautifully constructed account of the early development of the child in the family context from a psychoanalytic perspective. It draws particularly on the theoretical trajectory from Freud to Klein and Bion. It is written in a clear, accessible and jargon-free style and it is evident that the author wishes to reach and interest a wide audience of parents and others involved in the upbringing of children in the broadest sense. The growth of the child's mind is the story she wants to tell. The wealth of detailed examples drawn from the systematic observation of babies and young children, from more everyday observation of children's behaviour in family and social contexts and from a range of clinical interventions draws the reader into a vivid understanding of the author's conceptual framework and provides many memorable vignettes of children's lives.

Personality Development is a comprehensive overview of infant observation and personality development. It starts at inter-utero life and goes through to adulthood, focusing on the emotional tasks involved at each stage of development and the interplay of internal processes and external circumstances. Contents include: * intra-uterine life and the experience of birth * babyhood: becoming a person in the family * the toddler and the wider world * the latency period. Using clinical and observational material, it will be of interest to those teaching personality development courses, as well as mental health and child care professionals.