Integrating the therapeutic into the developmental in treating disturbed adolescents

This clinical study is organized around the treatment of a late adolescent who feared suiciding impulsively during an immobilizing depression and who proceeded to develop other severe symptoms. Yet he steadfastly refused to take medication and objected to seeing a therapist as well. His reason was an overriding wish to deal with his difficulties himself, a feature of his normal developmental imperative to emancipate to a young-adult level of psychological autonomy. Thus, the therapeutic task was to simultaneously hold him in treatment while supporting that normal developmental requisite. Elaborating upon this integration of the psychodynamic and the developmental is the major purpose of this study.