Many therapists can attest to the fact that adolescents can be difficult and frustrating clients – problems are seldom well defined, clearly delineated symptoms are more the exception than the rule, and troubling situations often involve the entire family.
Gestalt therapist Mark McConville draws on his more than twenty years of professional experience to offer clinicians an effective model for understanding and treating adolescents. He outlines the Developmental Tasks Model, which describes adolescents’ struggles, “temporary insanity,” and ultimately, triumph of development. He clearly demonstrates that the Gestalt therapeutic model bridges the theoretical and clinical gap, and offers an in-depth exploration of the various aspects of clinical work.
Adolescence offers valuable nuts-and-bolts advice on initiating therapy with adolescents who are not ready to do the self-reflective, exploratory work. In addition, the book examines the therapeutic method of engaging and cultivating the adolescent’s emerging inner world. With perception and sensitivity, McConville explains how the clinician can guide the adolescent in the very personal and subjective process of birthing an existential self.
The book details the process of creative reorganization of the self during adolescence and explores the changes that take place in the adolescent’s relationship with peers, parents, and others in the adult world. The author also tracks the interplay of intrapsychic and interpersonal boundary development and shows how this interplay manifests itself in relationship s and evolves from early through late adolescence. The Gestalt model of therapy allows the clinician to make sense of the confusion of the adolescent world and map out the multiple possibilities of clinical interventions.
Mark McConville Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Beachwood, Ohio, specializing in adult, adolescent, emerging adult, and family psychology. Dr. McConville is a senior faculty member at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and has taught and published widely on the subjects of child development, parenting, and counseling methodology. His book Adolescence: Psychotherapy and the Emergent Self (Jossey-Bass, 1995) was awarded the 1995 Nevis Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Gestalt Therapy theory. He is the author of the Counseling Feedback Report, an innovative and widely used adolescent assessment tool, and is co-editor of The Heart of Development: Gestalt Approaches to Childhood and Adolescence, vols. I & II,(The Analytic Press, 2001). He is currently working on a book on the transition from adolescence to adulthood, tentatively titled Getting a Life: a Parent’s Guide to the ‘Failure to Launch’ Syndrome. In addition to his private clinical practice, Dr. McConville serves as Consulting Psychologist to Hathaway Brown School and University School, both in the Cleveland area.
