In-Patient Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Adolescents

Traditional psychoanalytic technique isolated the patient from the therapist as a human being. The modern practitioner brought them together as people engaged in a purposive human relationship within a larger environment. The concept that ultimately evolved is that the treatment of the in-patient—whether with drug or psychotherapy—cannot be isolated from the social structure in which he and those who treat him are immersed, and to which they are ever-responding. When we see the patient and those treating him as humans inseparably involved in their society, we are bound to consider the effect of one upon the other as a human being and the impact of their setting upon them both. Hospital psychotherapy as a modality, then, cannot be isolated from the environment in which it is practiced anymore than from the people engaged in its process. In essence, one cannot conceptualize, describe, or evaluate psychotherapy without a simultaneous study and integration of the hospital's social structure into the consideration of any aspect of the patient's psychotherapy.

Some authors have retained their theories on adolescence so unaltered that they serve as a kind of “security blanket.” Their positions are unshakable as they account for every human phenomenon with an equanimity derived from an abiding “faith”—no matter what the social circumstances, struggles, and changes swirling about them. Accordingly, as so well described by Rinsley (1972), they adhere to the “turmoil” view of adolescence. According to them adolescence is at best a period of psychological disturbance and “normative crisis.” They describe the adolescent of our times as in a state of identity crisis, or role diffusion, storm