The holding environment and family therapy with acting out adolescents.
The pathology of the holding environment in families of borderline, schizoid, and narcissistic adolescents is reviewed. A model for family therapy is described in which this pathological family environment can be examined. In this model, the family therapists function to contain displaced, projected, and acted-out affects and impulses. A clinical example illustrates how a therapist's capacity to acknowledge, bear, work through, and redirect these impulses in the family treatment offers family members an opportunity to reestablish previously severed communications, allowing for continued family support at a critical period in the adolescent's development.
D000184:Acting Out; D000293:Adolescent; D003379:Countertransference; D004645:Empathy; D005190:Family; D005196:Family Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012043:Regression, Psychology; D012059:Rejection, Psychology; D012557:Schizoid Personality Disorder / Q000628:therapy