Facing It Out

Based on the wealth of experience gathered in the forty years of the life of the Adolescent Department at the Clinic, this covers a full range of clinical work with some of the most difficult areas of adolescence, but it also gives a conceptual framework of normal adolescence and traces the difficulties that arise when this goes wrong. Facing It Out presents new work which has not previously been fully described. The book will be vital reading for clinicians whose work includes work with adolescents. The Adolescent Department of the Tavistock Clinic in its long history has been engaging with young people and their families when the strains prove too great. In this book, staff of the Adolescent Dept examine in accessible language different clinical aspects of adolescent disturbance, exploring in particular the impact on the family. The chapters look at a range of severity of disturbance from adjustment crises to anorexia nervosa and psychosis as well as aspects of adolescent development in small families and in the formation of a sense of identity. With the exception of infancy, adolescence is the most radical of all developmental periods. In the few years between puberty and adulthood, one's sense of oneself must adapt to physical changes of size, shape, strength, and to full sexual and reproductive capacity. Socially there is the need to develop the capacity for intimate relationships and to survive the initiation into the workplace via the demanding examinations: all this in a complex and dangerous world.