Download Author: Sarnoff, Charles M.D.

57 eBooks available.

Assessment

The diagnostic assessment of emotionally disturbed children in late latency-early adolescence (9 to 15 years old) requires that the clinician acquire special techniques and background knowledge.

Psychotherapeutic Strategies

For the most part, it is required that the psychotherapeutic strategy applied to early adolescents be adjusted to take into account certain characteristics of the early-adolescent life-stage. These include, in part, developmentally mandated requirements (e.g., immature thinking processes—thought disorders) and socially defined immaturities (e.g., lack of comprehension of the role of educated professionals in providing expert help in areas of need). Therefore, this chapter is devoted to those psychotherapeutic strategies and techniques derived from information about the psychology of psychotherapy, which set the psychotherapeutic treatment of the early adolescent apart from the treatment protocols used for children of latency age and adults.

Adolescent Masochism

To understand the nature of the manifestations of masochism in adolescence, it is necessary that one understand their origins in the previous phases from which they have emerged. The manifestations are masochistic braggadocio, masochistic perversions, adolescent shyness, aspects of prepubescent schizophrenia, incipient masochistic character traits, and the misuse of free association during psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy sessions. The genetic complexes of origin that give structure to the forms of adolescent masochism may be studied through a review of the life phases of masochism.

Epilogue: Late Adolescence into Adulthood

This chapter is devoted to a description of such tasks and troubles from the point of view of a younger person gazing ageward. It is meant to round out the developmental presentation of this book and to give background within the context of the book for the therapist who needs to know what is on the patient’s mind, though not necessarily in focus and perhaps rejected as unimportant by the unwary child.

Derivatives of Latency in the Psychopathology of Anorexia Nervosa

The occurrence of anorectic symptoms during the period of emergence from latency is a common event. Anorexia most often makes its appearance at this time. The more pathological the cognitive impairments, the more likely is the child to become involved in an intransigent form of anorexia. The longer anorexia lasts as a defensive configuration during emergence from latency, the more entrenched and necessary does the reaction become. For this reason, early psychotherapeutic intervention is indicated.

Masturbation

Adolescent masturbation serves as a bridge from evocation and fantasy to communicative relationships with the world of reality.

Bridges to the Object World

For those who work with adolescents it is important to know that there is a natural maturational and developmental stage during which the capacity to fall in love emerges.  Failure to develop the capacity to fall in love has very serious diagnostic and prognostic clinical implications. Impairments in the capacity to fall in love reflect defects in component ego skills. Diagnostic assessments in adolescence should mark these skills for evaluation in the case of selfish and narcissistic patients.

The Object World Responds

The response of the object world has a strong influence on the final shape of the personality. It is the source of the socialization and reality influences that put their stamp on the ultimate form. From the standpoint of late latency-early adolescence, the interactions of drives, talents, and needs, which make up the adolescent thrust, and the responses of the object world follow a predictable pattern, which results in a predictable and acceptable product.

Character Development and Superego Formation

During the latency and early adolescent years, the term character must be used with awareness that ego transformations and cognitive growth produce continuous changes in character.

Psychotherapy and Personality Change

There are developmental influences and events that are characteristic of the latency period. They are as unique to the latency time as are those that accompany early childhood and adolescence, though not as well known. This chapter will be devoted to a study of these developmental events and the mutual influences that exist between them and therapeutic maneuvers during the latency period.