The psychotherapist and the adolescent athlete

Athletic participation is often the focus for the expression of affect in adolescence. Emotions derive from the athletic arena itself, as well as from personal and family life. To help the athlete gain insight and mastery over his or her emotional life, the therapist must understand the role, if any, of the family in the cause of athletic complaints. Appropriate psychologic therapies include individual therapy, family therapy, and a mixture thereof, and they may be oriented toward performance issues, personal issues, or both. In the therapy, it will be helpful to reinforce the opportunity for a psychological "moratorium," a delay on excessive demands of social adaptation. In this way, the adolescent athlete has the opportunity to consider and try alternative solutions to the problem of establishing a satisfactory identity. This process will be facilitated by the therapist's insight into his or her own competitive issues, and efforts to modulate investment in the patient's achieving athletic success. Although athletes as a group are sometimes thought of as unlikely candidates for psychotherapy, adolescent athletes, in particular, often become intensively involved in their therapy for brief periods of time, with good success.