This is a detailed account of an 18-month course of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy for preadolescent children. The authors show how developmental aspects of early adolescence have to be understood in order to contain and work with the group's preoccupations. Intensely ambivalent feelings about separation and independence are expressed and enacted in the group. Transferential and realistic aspects of the group's relationship to the therapists are highlighted and the therapist's countertransference is discussed. Effective supervision is seen to produce development in the group's functioning.
Freud, A.
(1968) `On Certain Difficulties in the Preadolescent's Relation to his Parents', in The Writings of Anna Freud, Vol. 4. New York: University Press. (Orig. 1949.)
2.
Grotjahn, M.
(1972) `The Transference Dynamics of the Therapeutic Group Experience', in l.H. Berkowitz (ed.) Adolescents Grow in Groups. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
