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Development III: Adolescence
March 19, 2021 @ 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm, Freud Classroom
Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2020-21, 3rd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Donald Schimmel, PhD
Flaviane Ferreira, MD LMHC
View Whole Syllabus
Introduction
Welcome to our seminar on Adolescence. This course begins with pubescence and ends with late adolescence and emerging adulthood. The aim of this course is to familiarize you with the central developmental challenges associated with early, middle, and late adolescence, as well as emerging adulthood. In addition, throughout this seminar, we will explore how to understand adolescent pathology. The readings draw from a combination of classical and modern articles.
Our aim is also to provide you with an understanding of the manifold interacting elements that influence psychological development during the adolescent years. We intend to discuss the concepts of adolescent sexuality, drive resurgence, object removal, formal operational thinking, identity consolidation and several special issues and challenges in the psychoanalytic treatment of adolescents. Our hope is that this seminar will enrich your work with adults. Indeed, many of you who treat adults may find yourselves confronted with individuals who, from a developmental perspective, have not completed certain adolescent tasks.
Learning Objectives
As a result of taking this course participants will be able to:
- compare and contrast the psychological development of young people at different phases of adolescence;
- discuss the important psychological tasks associated with each adolescent phase;
- discuss the important intra-psychic tasks that are associated with each adolescent epoch;
- describe psychoanalytic principles applicable to the treatment of both adolescents and adults and how remnants of an unresolved adolescent phase might carry over into adulthood;
- learn to play with adolescents of different ages and how that is applicable to your work with adults;
- hone your interpretive skills, e.g., you will learn how to interpret through the mechanism of displacement, and how that is applicable to your work with adult patients; and
- learn how to make in-session use of electronics, e.g., smart phones and/or iPads, as a way of deepening your work with adolescents.
March 19, 2021 — Introduction – Historical Review
[42 pages]
We begin with a brief discussion of development from adolescence to adulthood. Historical and cultural changes that have occurred as the world has shifted from an industrial to a digital era have caused today’s youth to traverse development somewhat differently than previous generations. We then turn to Anna Freud who provides a clinically relevant discussion of normality and pathology in adolescence.
We highly recommend Esman’s article which provides an interesting history on the concept of adolescence, as well as an example of an individual who seems to struggle throughout his life with conflicts originating in but far from mastered during adolescence.
Stambler, M.J. (2017). “100 Years of Adolescence and its Prehistory from Cave to Computer.” PSC, 70:22-39.
Freud, A. (1958). “Adolescence.” PSC, 13:255-278
Recommended
Esman, A. (1993). “G. Stanley Hall and the Invention of Adolescence.” Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Chicago Press. Vol. 19:6-20
