Working With Adolescents: A Contemporary Psychodynamic Approach

205 Pages·2003·0.78 MB·English

by  Stephen Briggs

WORKING WITH
ADOLESCENTS
A Contemporary
Psychodynamic Approach
Stephen Briggs
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WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS
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BASIC TEXTS IN COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Series Editor:Stephen Frosh
This series introduces readers to the theory and practice of counselling and
psychotherapy across a wide range of topic areas. The books will appeal to
anyone wishing to use counselling and psychotherapeutic skills and will be
particularly relevant to workers in health, education, social work and related
settings.The books in this series are unusual in being rooted in psychodynamic
and systemic ideas,yet being written at an accessible,readable and introductory
level. Each text offers theoretical background and guidance for practice, with
creative use of clinical examples.
Published
Jenny Altschuler
WORKING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS
Bill Barnes,Sheila Ernst and Keith Hyde
AN INTRODUCTION TO GROUPWORK
Stephen Briggs
WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS
Alex Coren
SHORT-TERM PSYCHOTHERAPY
Emilia Dowling and Gill Gorell Barnes
WORKING WITH CHILDREN AND PARENTS THROUGH
SEPARATION AND DIVORCE
Gill Gorell Barnes
FAMILY THERAPY IN CHANGING TIMES
Ravi Rana
COUNSELLING STUDENTS
Paul Terry
COUNSELLING THE ELDERLY AND THEIR CARERS
Jan Wiener and Mannie Sher
COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
Invitation to authors
The Series Editor welcomes proposals for new books within the Basic Texts in
Counselling and Psychotherapy series.These should be sent to Stephen Frosh at
the School of Psychology,Birkbeck College,Malet Street,London,WC1E 7HX
(email [email protected]).
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W
ORKING WITH
A
DOLESCENTS
A Contemporary
Psychodynamic
Approach
S B
TEPHEN RIGGS
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© Stephen Briggs 2002
Foreword © Robin Anderson 2002
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2002 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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ISBN 0-333-94501-8
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Briggs,Stephen.
Working with adolescents :a contemporary psychodynamic
approach / Stephen Briggs.
p.cm.– (Basic texts in counselling and psychotherapy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–333–94501–8
1. Adolescent psychotherapy. 2. Psychodynamic psychotherapy
I. Title. II. Series.
RJ505.P92 B75 2002
616.89¢140835–dc21 2002025842
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
Printed in China
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C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Foreword by Robin Anderson ix
Introduction 1
1 Contemporary Adolescence:Turbulence or
Transition? 5
Turbulence or transition:a question of (adult)
ideology? 5
Psycho-social perspectives on adolescence 11
Turbulence and risks 14
Vulnerability and risk 18
Turbulence and containment 19
The container–contained relationship 20
Being held in mind,and not being held in mind 22
Containing transition and turbulence in adolescence 24
Summary 26
2 Becoming a Subject in Adolescence 28
Processes of separating in adolescence 28
Separation–individuation 30
Oscillation between different states of mind 30
Power,vulnerability and subject relations 31
Relating to the body:puberty and the emergence
of adult love and sexuality 37
Emergent masculinity 45
Summary 46
3 Ethnicity and Identity in Adolescence 48
Across cultural boundaries 48
Tolerating and not tolerating difference 51
v
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CONTENTS
Cultural identity and hybridity 53
Strong cultural ties 59
A sense of belonging 61
Summary 63
4 Parenting Adolescents 65
The intensity of parenting adolescents 65
Anxiety and positioning in families of adolescents 69
Changing families 70
Families of adolescents 72
Different parents 75
Parents in pain about adolescents 78
Summary 82
5 Containing Adolescence in Organisations 84
The emotional impact of adolescence 84
Being swept along with adolescence 89
Defences against the fear of adolescent emotionality 90
Working with adolescents in turbulent organisations 94
Reflection on adolescent emotionality in a
psycho-social space 95
Making contact with adolescents in turbulent
organisations 96
Summary 101
6 Adolescents as Temporary Outsiders:Drugs,
Offending and Antisocial Behaviour 103
Temporary outsidership 103
Failure to reach the position of temporary outsider 108
Adolescent problems and the temporary outsider
position 110
Stuck on the outside 110
Delinquency,antisocial behaviour and outsidership 113
Drugs and subjectivity 117
Summary 119
7 Adolescents with Difficulties in Achieving
Separateness 120
Not separating 120
Disability in adolescence 123
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CONTENTS
Eating disorders in adolescence 126
Summary 135
8 Psychotic and Suicidal States in Adolescence 137
Psychotic subjects 137
Working with psychotic adolescents 141
Fragmentation of the self 143
Suicidal subjects 144
Working with suicide risk 145
Suicidal dynamics in adolescents:cruelty 147
Suicidal dynamics in adolescence:getting rid of
the pain 149
Suicidal relationship to the body 152
Protection from psychosis and suicide 153
Summary 154
9 Leaving Home 156
Do adolescents still ‘leave home’? 156
Facing loss and separation 157
Positioning as adults 159
Becoming a student 161
Becoming a sexual partner 162
Becoming a parent 165
The great divide:leaving home,leaving care 168
Becoming a worker 171
Becoming adult 173
Summary 174
Notes 176
Bibliography 181
Index 189
vii
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A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The source of this book is the experience of working with ado-
lescents and their families in the Adolescent Department of the
Tavistock Clinic, and many teachers, colleagues and students
have provided me with rich opportunities for thinking about
adolescence. In particular I wish to thank Robin Anderson,
Andrew Cooper, Anna Dartington, Helene Dubinsky, Louise
Lyon, Deirdre Moylan, and Gianna Williams. I am grateful
to the Psychosocial Studies group at the University of East
London for the opportunities there to think about the meeting
points of psychoanalytic and social theories. I am grateful to
Stephen Frosh for his helpful editing. I wish also to acknowl-
edge the many young people I have worked with, and who
formed the basis for the case examples used in the book.All
case material is disguised and fictionalised in order to preserve
confidentiality and anonymity.Finally,I wish to thank Beverley
and Eleanor for their support and patience while I was writing.
STEPHEN BRIGGS
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F
OREWORD
In the last fifty years adolescence has forced its way into the
consciousness of western society,provoking anxiety,excitement
and envy by turns in the older generation.While many of these
reactions say more about the adults than the adolescents them-
selves,any serious student of adolescence can see that many of
our young people are in deep trouble.This is witnessed by the
increase in male adolescent suicides,or of young drug addicts,
or the record levels of delinquency and violence in which young
people are both perpetrators and victims.
Some of the tasks of adolescence captured by Stephen Briggs
in Chapter 9 on leaving home – becoming a parent,becoming a
student, becoming a worker, becoming a sexual partner – are
now much more difficult in a world which is so complex and so
rapidly changing. Young people do not have the bedrock of
adult certainty to challenge and accommodate to since most
adults are themselves having to cope with such different cir-
cumstances from the situation of their own adolescence. For
example,most jobs that young people are starting did not exist
in their parents’ generation and the jobs their parents had have
disappeared.Gone are the days of following in the footsteps of
parents.Thus the notion of a role model cannot be anything like
as concrete as it once was.All the different aspects of becom-
ing an adult require of young people a much deeper working
through of the tasks of adolescence in the context of parents –
so vital for the support of young people – who find it much
harder to contain them.In other words,it is very hard to help
young people through a process which is so bewildering and
anxiety-provoking for the adults themselves.
The challenge for professionals trying to help young people
in trouble is clear.Society is slowly recognising that something
needs to be done, but often professionals are thrust into tasks
of helping young people only to find themselves faced with sit-
uations which are hard to understand and therefore hard to find
ways of being constructive.
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