Late Teenage Years

Dr Luis Rodriguez de la Sierra is a Training and Supervisor Adult and Child and Adolescent Psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He qualified as a psychiatrist in Barcelona and London, where he also trained as a Group psychotherapist. He worked for many years in the NHS and at the Anna Freud Centre and currently works at the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis and in private practice. He has published papers on child analysis and drug addiction, and has also edited 'Child Analysis Today'. Dr Joan Schachter is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She trained in medicine and psychiatry before specialising in psychotherapy in the NHS, first in the Cassel Hospital and subsequently at Parkside Clinic where she worked as a consultant psychotherapist for twenty-four years. She also worked at the Brent Adolescent Centre for three years and was part of a research project investigating breakdown in young adults at the Anna Freud Centre. She now works in private psychoanalytic practice with adults, and is actively involved in teaching and training. She has published in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and contributed chapters to two books on 'A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Violence and Suicide' and 'Female Experience: Four Generations of British Women Psychoanalysts on Work with Women'.

'Written with remarkable clarity and concision, the authors draw upon a lifetime of clinical experience of working with young people, and in a series of elegant chapters, share their insights generously, tackling such perennial challenges as depression, anxiety, aggression, academic failure, and the addictions. Utilising their psychoanalytical expertise, the authors help parents and psychological professionals to discriminate between how much adolescent suffering can be attributed to the ordinary vicissitudes of passing through puberty, and how much results from unresolved psychical conflicts from earlier stages of development. As a bonus, Series Editor Dr A.H. Brafman provides a remarkably helpful coda to the book, offering many additional insights for parents. This rich and engaging book deserves a long shelf-life.'- Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Centre for Child Mental Health, London; Consultant, The Bowlby Centre; and Honorary Visiting Professor, School of Arts, University of Roehampton'The authors of this book have written a refreshing and comprehensive psychoanalytic view of adolescence as it moves ever closer to the adult life. Late adolescence is a time of much potential and possibility but it is not without its difficulties and challenges. How do adolescents deal with the many vexations of developmental conflict and dilemma? What is normal and what is not? What kinds of mental breakdown might occur to limit their futures? And what of parents and therapists as they do their best to help? These and many other questions are readily taken on by the authors with great care and understanding - and it is this which makes for a book that is thoughtful, imaginative and well worth reading to keep all of us in tune with the ebbs and flows of the adolescent adventure.'- Peter Wilson, BA, Dip Soc Studies, MACP, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist

• Series Editor’s Foreword , Introduction , Normality and pathology in adolescence , Depression and anxiety in the older adolescent , Academic failure , Aggression , Drug abuse , Severe mental illness , The therapist’s angle , The parents’ angle