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I would like to begin by saying that it is an honor to review one of Dr. Gil's books as her work was an inspiration for me when I took my first job as a therapist in a school. I remember feeling both anchored and inspired by her written material.
In her book, Dr. Gil details the tragedy of abuse as it afflicts adolescents, the toll that it extracts from them, and their means of responding to it, as well as the difficulties clinicians face in treating abused adolescents, including these patient's attempts to “fight our best efforts” (p. 3). Drawing on the literature and her own clinical experience in working primarily with teenagers referred through the court, probation departments, and social services, she endorses various treatment strategies situated in an “integrated theoretical framework.” This framework includes: Bowlby's attachment theory, narrative therapy, developmental theories, identity development theories, trauma theory, a systems approach, cognitive-behavioral theory, feminist theory, sociological theories, and multicultural perspectives. While one might be hard-pressed to come up with a theory she did not “integrate,” this broad theoretical base lends itself to her very flexible and creative approach to therapy. She sees her “structured” treatment model not as a “rigid plan imposed on her clients” (p. 83), but rather views therapy as an “exchange of ideas and suggestions, mutually generated and tested” (p. 83). As she clearly states from the outset, her basic premise is that “child abuse interrupts and disrupts the developmental process, and that several developmental tasks are not fully addressed; therefore, these must be revisited during the treatment process” (p. 22). She is invested in an a structured, time-limited, focused treatment approach organized around the unresolved traumatic experiences, a model that is “primarily empowerment-based with a goal of increasing overall functioning” (p. 22).
Gil begins the book by defining the word “adolescence”