Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of the Severely Disturbed Adolescent

Dimitris Anastasopoulos M.D. is an Adult and Child Psychiatrist working in Athens. He trained in adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic, London, and is a training psychotherapist for adult and adolescent psychotherapists in Greece. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Hellenic Association of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (HACAPP). He is vice-chairman of the EFPP. Margot Waddell is a psychoanalyst and consultant child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. She has written extensively on adolescence, including work on groups, gangs and scapegoating.

'As a "second chance" - to use Blos's term - adolescence contains components that are capable of leading either to a restoration of the fragmented personality or to a hell in which the chaotic psychic disturbance that becomes permanent. This volume brings together a distillation of the therapeutic experience and thinking of senior psychoanalytic therapists working in different European countries and belonging to different "schools" of psychoanalysis. I believe that it will contribute to the exploration of the therapeutic approach to severely disturbed adolescents which has got under way in recent years. The cross-cultural nature of the book is, in particular, a symbol of the prospect of a Europe without frontiers and of the development of the theoretical basis and clinical practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy beyond ideological classifications and obstacles. That, I believe, was also the purpose of the foundation and operation of the EFPP.'- Dimitris Anastasopoulos, from his Foreword'These chapters are written by psychoanalytic psychotherapists from different countries of Europe and from different analytic traditions, and yet it can be seen that there is a thread running through all of them which shows that our common psychoanalytical ancestry has interacted creatively with our different traditions in Europe. Sometimes these seem to divide us, but I think that they can also be shown to enrich us as we face a common and serious challenge to our psychoanalytic skills and to the future adults of Europe.'- Robin Anderson, from his Introduction

• Foreword -- Introduction -- A mind of one's own: introjective processes and the capacity to think -- Links between internal and external reality in devising a therapeutic setting for adolescents who present with serious conduct disorders -- The influence of psychic trauma on adolescence and its disorders -- Containment and the body of the analyst: on psychotic transference in adolescence. A case of dysmorphophobia -- Therapy for adolescents in detention for violent crime -- An invitation to a journey: the function of the double in the psychoanalytic psychodrama of a psychotic adolescent -- Factors contributing to the psychotic breakdown of three adolescents