Severely Disturbed Youngsters

Every professional who has worked with severely disturbed youth is familiar with the problems that arise in dealing with their parents. Here is a book which shows how important it is to establish a therapeutic alliance with the parents of severely disturbed young people in order to improve the success of counselling with them. It also explores methods of how to ease the difficulties encountered in establishing such a relationship with the parents or guardians. In "Severely Disturbed Youngsters", the insights of psychoanalysis are used to understand reactions to parents and to develop an empathic approach to them through a new theoretical framework. Although in the popular view, a psychoanalytic approach is considered to be opposed to parents, this volume is testimony to the unique contribution such an approach can make to the support of parents and, thereby, their children. A major and unique emphasis of "Severely Disturbed Youngsters' is placed on exploring the feelings, reactions and sensitivities of the therapist that can interfere with this important aspect of treatment. The thrust of the book is to put the understanding of this interference in a theoretical context and to indicate ways of coping with the interference. All persons who work with severely disturbed children - therapists of all disciplines, teachers, child care workers and administrators of any children's agency - who need to have some contact with their parents, even minimal contact, should find this book to be a clearly written guide to establishing excellent therapeutic relationships with both parents and disturbed children.