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Collaboration was at the heart of a conference held on January 29, 2000, entitled “Changing Bodies, Changing Minds: Psychoanalytic Treatment of the Adolescent.” The conference was co-sponsored by the Child Development Program Committee of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute (SFPI), McAuley Institute of St. Mary's Medical Center, and the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP). The Sophia Mirviss Foundation also made a generous grant to support the conference. The Planning Committee for the conference consisted of Sharon Tyson, Ph.D., Director of Training at McAuleys; Terrence Owens, Ph.D., Principle Psychologist for Psychiatry Services at McAuley's; Erin Mullin, Ph.D., from NCSPP; and myself from SFPI. The Planning Committee wanted the conference to be a conversation among excellent thinkers about variations in how they might conceptualize and treat the disturbances of adolescence, rather than a lengthy case presentation or paper. The panel consisted of Efrain Bleiberg, M.D.; Peter Fonagy, Ph.D.; Maureen Katz, M.D.; and Stephen Seligman, D.M.H. The speakers were chosen because they are analysts who lend themselves well to a collaborative process and have demonstrated community and social interests beyond the consulting room.
The collaboration in planning and sponsoring the conference had many benefits. Because three organizations assumed the financial risks, more could be afforded. Harder to measure, but even more important, was a spirit of coming together and inclusiveness.
Drs. Bleiberg and Fonagy write and present together frequently, so their presentations were in many ways intertwined. Their primary focus was on the fate of mentalization during the adolescent process. They emphasized that self-reflection is undermined by the physiological, familial, and social upheavals of adolescence. Reflection is established by external relations, that is, “I know who I am by making you upset.” A more extreme form of this strategy during adoles