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Course Overview

Session 6: Treatment

Ambivalence:

Fears

Defenses

The Battle

Session 5: Normal Adolescece -- To Grow or Not to Grow

Jeffery Smith, MD

Normal Ambivalence: Bloch's theory of drive vs. fear

Bloch suggests three goals: 1. Completing maturation into an adult, 2. Not losing or alienating the parents, and 3. Gaining parental "sponsorship" of the transition.

Is turmoil a necessary part of adolescence?

Fears:

Separation Anxiety (and self-consciousness)

Emancipation recast as aggression, survivor guilt

Need for pride in parents and denial of parental failures

Fear of success and/or surpassing parents

Fear of failure

Internalizing parental attitudes and covert wishes

Need for Sponsorship and Rites of Passage

Defenses:

The "Adolescent Dance:" Demanding responsibility and showing you can't handle it.

Aceticism (Anna Freud)

Intellectualization (Anna Freud)

Counterphobic Bravado

Drugs, compulsive behaviors, anorexia

The Battle: Making demands on adults to support emancipation and autonomy leads to battle with adults and in the end both sides agree that the other has some points.

Other Theories

Traditional Psychoanalytic view: Libidinal Drive at center

Piaget: Abstract Thinking

Bowlby and Attachment theory