The world of adolescence

Literature and psychoanalysis are different media for exploring the world of the mind, and in this finely crafted book Beta Copley gives equal weight to literary, psychotherapeutic and social perspectives on adolescence.

Inspired by the writings of Klein, Bion and Meltzer on groups and on mental states, she is also mindful of the problems associated with treating literary works as case histories. She addresses three celebrated literary works with adolescence in mind: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado about Nothing and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. For the reader these will evoke their own memories of love, conflict and growing up, and set the stage for the clinical material in the second half of the book.

She also returns to the oft-studied theme of adolescent development and the social framework; and gives rich examples of problems of young people in areas such as leaving home, developing sexuality, and social conflict. These will illuminate not only the therapeutic work itself, but something of the basic struggles of adolescence itself.

Beta Copley illustrates the core approach of intensive one-to-one work with adolescents. This is neither widely available nor always appropriate. She looks at other forms of intervention derived from it, which may also be of inestimable benefit for young people in need.