Focusing on the complexities of working with adolescents, this book provides insights into developmental and therapeutic processes through a relational-phenomenological Gestalt lens. Bronagh Starrs explores the unique challenges faced by counsellors and psychotherapists, offering a nuanced understanding that enhances therapeutic effectiveness in adolescent contexts.
Counsellors and psychotherapists are faced with ever-increasing complexity in their work with adolescents. In this book, Bronagh Starrs offers an understanding of developmental and therapeutic process from a relational-phenomenological Gestalt perspective. Starrs shows how the adolescent’s presenting symptom issues are statements of compromised lifespace integrity and demonstrates therapeutic sensibility to the adolescent’s first-person experience. Throughout the book, the clinician is offered extensive relational and creative strategies to support integrity repair for the adolescent. The developmental impact of various lifespace contexts are discussed, including parental separation, complex family configuration, grief, adoption, and emerging sexual orientation and gender experience. Therapeutic responses to common creative adjustments are explored including anxiety, school refusal, depression, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, alcohol and drug use, and sexual trauma. Adolescent A Radical Relational Approach will help counsellors and psychotherapists to develop deeper levels of competency in their work as adolescent psychotherapists, as they navigate the complex and fascinating experience of therapy with teenagers. This exceptional contribution is highly suitable for both experienced practitioners and students of counselling and psychotherapy.
A Relational Perspective
Focusing on the complexities of adolescent development, this book equips psychotherapists with both theoretical insights and practical strategies. It addresses how young people navigate the challenges of contemporary life, offering guidance for professionals to effectively support their clients during this critical period of adjustment and growth.