Treating the Other Third: Vicissitudes of Adolescent Development and Therapy

Abstract

Treating the Other Third refers to one appropriate focus for such study, which is that more than one-third of adolescent patients, for whatever reason, do not respond to psychotropic medication. Specifically, Part I is devoted to the psychotherapeutic treatment of severe psychopathology (suicidal depression, bipolar symptoms, bulimia) that is typically managed with medications. Detailed case descriptions are utilized to explicate both the internal conflicts responsible for symptom formation and the difficulties encountered when trying to maintain treatment in the face of the adolescent's normal developmental imperative to emancipate from relationships with parental-type figures. Parts n and in consider, respectively, unique and collective outcomes of development. Part n focuses on two outlier end points of psychological development with respect to the opposite poles of relatedness—that is, the objects of one's love and sexual desire, and of one's aggression. In Part III, the interface between developmental psychology and sociology is examined in one specific respect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: preface)