Adolescence and Developmental Breakdown


Book Description

In this book, Moses and Egle Laufer contend that severely disturbed adolescents can be assessed and treated psychoanalytically, and that their illness differs from comparable in older patients, and that the psychopathology has its source in conflicts over the sexually mature body. Extensive case histories support their argument.




The Promise of Adolescence


Book Description

Adolescenceâ€"beginning with the onset of puberty and ending in the mid-20sâ€"is a critical period of development during which key areas of the brain mature and develop. These changes in brain structure, function, and connectivity mark adolescence as a period of opportunity to discover new vistas, to form relationships with peers and adults, and to explore one's developing identity. It is also a period of resilience that can ameliorate childhood setbacks and set the stage for a thriving trajectory over the life course. Because adolescents comprise nearly one-fourth of the entire U.S. population, the nation needs policies and practices that will better leverage these developmental opportunities to harness the promise of adolescenceâ€"rather than focusing myopically on containing its risks. This report examines the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development and outlines how this knowledge can be applied, both to promote adolescent well-being, resilience, and development, and to rectify structural barriers and inequalities in opportunity, enabling all adolescents to flourish.




Adolescent Development and the Biology of Puberty


Book Description

Adolescence is one of the most fascinating and complex transitions in the human life span. Its breathtaking pace of growth and change is second only to that of infancy. Over the last two decades, the research base in the field of adolescence has had its own growth spurt. New studies have provided fresh insights while theoretical assumptions have changed and matured. This summary of an important 1998 workshop reviews key findings and addresses the most pressing research challenges.




Adolescents, Families, and Social Development


Book Description

This book provides an in-depth examination of adolescents’ social development in the context of the family. Grounded in social domain theory, the book draws on the author’s research over the past 25 years Draws from the results of in-depth interviews with more than 700 families Explores adolescent-parent relationships among ethnic majority and minority youth in the United States, as well as research with adolescents in Hong Kong and China Discusses extensive research on disclosure and secrecy during adolescence, parenting, autonomy, and moral development Considers both popular sources such as movies and public surveys, as well as scholarly sources drawn from anthropology, history, sociology, social psychology, and developmental psychology Explores how different strands of development, including autonomy, rights and justice, and society and social convention, become integrated and coordinated in adolescence




Normal Child and Adolescent Development


Book Description

Normal Child and Adolescent Development is an exceptional learning tool for beginning mental health professionals engaged in training programs to prepare for work with children, adolescents, and adults with mental and behavioral problems. Throughout the book, illustrative examples of normal and abnormal development are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of normal development concepts in understanding abnormal development. Intended as an introduction to child and adolescent mental development, this book describes each major stage of the development process, integrating each major aspect of development with the leading developmental theories. Each chapter follows the same basic outline to help the reader understand the continuous nature of the child's mental development through succeeding developmental phases. This schematic organization emphasizes that children's mental development is continuous as well as discontinuous: their representational world provides the continuous "landscape" from which they progressively perceive the social world using their increasingly more complex perceptual and cognitive capabilities; discontinuous in the sense that children's maturational advances, coupled with new life events, will produce relatively unexpected developmental changes in them. The text includes several important concepts of normal mental development. A thorough understanding of the id, ego, superego and the self; the unconscious mental domain; implicit versus explicit memories; the development of the internal distress signal; mechanisms of defense; transference reactions; and mental organizing principles is essential for any practitioner who will ultimately be involved in evaluatory and treatment work with mentally disturbed children, adolescents, and adults.




Understanding Youth


Book Description

Adolescent development research and theory have tremendous potential to inform the work of high school teachers, counselors, and administrators. Understanding Youth bridges the gap between adolescent development theory and practice. Nakkula and Toshalis explore how factors such as social class, peer and adult relationships, gender norms, and the media help to shape adolescents’ sense of themselves and their future expectations and aspirations.




The Body in Adolescence


Book Description

The Body in Adolescence: Psychic Isolation and Physical Symptoms examines the affective experience of psychic isolation as an important and painful element of adolescent development. Mary Brady begins by discussing how psychic isolation, combined with the intensity of adolescent processes, can leave adolescents unable to articulate their experience. She then shows how the therapist can understand and help adolescents whose difficulty with articulation and symbolization can leave them vulnerable to breakdown into physical bodily symptoms. This book introduces fresh ideas about adolescent development in the first chapter. Subsequent chapters include clinical essays involving adolescent patients presenting with bodily expressions such as anorexia, bulimia, cutting, substance abuse, and suicide attempts. Attention is also paid to adolescents’ use of social media in relation to these bodily symptoms – such as their use of on-line ‘pro-ana’ or cutting sites. Clinicians can feel challenged or even stymied when presented with their adolescent patient’s fresh cut or recent episode of binge drinking. Brady uses Bion’s conceptualization of containment and the balance of psychotic versus integrative parts of the personality to examine the emergence of concrete bodily symptoms in adolescence. Throughout, Mary Brady offers ways of understanding and empathically engaging with adolescents. This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who treat adolescents and other patients with physical symptoms, as well as other readers with an interest in the psychoanalytic understanding of these issues.




Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence


Book Description

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.




Child and Adolescent Psychology


Book Description

Child and Adolescent Psychology provides an accessible and thorough introduction to human development by integrating insights from typical and atypical development. This integration cements understanding since the same processes are involved. Knowledge about atypical development informs the understanding of typical development, and knowledge about typical development is a necessary basis for understanding atypical development and working with children with disorders. Based on international research, and informed by biological, social and cultural perspectives, the book provides explanations of developmental phenomena, with a focus on how children and adolescents at different age levels actually think, feel and act. Following a structure by topic, with chronological developments within each chapter, von Tetzchner presents and contrasts the major theoretical ideas in developmental psychology and discusses their implications for different aspects of development. He also integrates information about sensory, physical and cognitive disabilities and the main emotional and behavioral disorders of childhood and adolescence, and the developmental consequences of these disabilities and disorders. Child and Adolescent Psychology is accompanied by online resources for lecturers and students to enhance the book, including essay questions for each chapter, Powerpoint slides and multiple-choice questions. The book and companion website will prove invaluable to developmental psychology students.




Adolescence and Psychoanalysis


Book Description

This book deals with specific aspects of psychic functioning and development in adolescence. It offers a conspectus of present-day psychoanalytic understanding of the process of adolescence and its vicissitudes. The book is helpful for those interested in the field of adolescent psychoanalysis.