Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of the Severely Disturbed Adolescent

'As a "second chance" - to use Blos's term - adolescence contains components that are capable of leading either to a restoration of the fragmented personality or to a hell in which the chaotic psychic disturbance that becomes permanent. This volume brings together a distillation of the therapeutic experience and thinking of senior psychoanalytic therapists working in different European countries and belonging to different "schools" of psychoanalysis. I believe that it will contribute to the exploration of the therapeutic approach to severely disturbed adolescents which has got under way in recent years. The cross-cultural nature of the book is, in particular, a symbol of the prospect of a Europe without frontiers and of the development of the theoretical basis and clinical practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy beyond ideological classifications and obstacles. That, I believe, was also the purpose of the foundation and operation of the EFPP.'- Dimitris Anastasopoulos, from his Foreword'These chapters are written by psychoanalytic psychotherapists from different countries of Europe and from different analytic traditions, and yet it can be seen that there is a thread running through all of them which shows that our common psychoanalytical ancestry has interacted creatively with our different traditions in Europe. Sometimes these seem to divide us, but I think that they can also be shown to enrich us as we face a common and serious challenge to our psychoanalytic skills and to the future adults of Europe.'- Robin Anderson, from his Introduction