Adolescent Identity Treatment (Springer International Publishing AG)

Adolescent Identity Treatment: An Integrative Approach for Personality Pathology is a groundbreaking title that provides general and specific clinical strategies to help adolescents who lack an integrated identity. While most adolescents build up satisfying interpersonal relations, are successful in school and work, and start to have romantic relationships, there is a minority of adolescents who do not succeed in this. Adolescents without an integrated identity are at high risk to develop problems in school, work, family, friends and intimate relations. Those with identity diffusion are at highest risk to engage in a wide range of self-destructive behaviors. Based on a careful integration of object relations (for example, Transference Focused Psychotherapy), family systems, and cognitive behavioral approaches, AIT clears the blockages to normal identity development to enable adolescents to reach long-term adaptive functioning. In addition to a compact knowledge-base about description and assessment, Adolescent Identity Treatment: An Integrative Approach for Personality Pathology offers a multitude of clinical examples and concrete interventions, with phase-specific treatment components, including a clear Treatment Frame, Psychoeducation, Environmental Interventions (with a Home Plan that addresses self-care behaviors, responsibilities and improved boundaries that fosters the development of better relationships between the adolescent and family), and Parenting Strategies, all in the service of creating a space for the individual work with the adolescent.§