Contact and despair: a Gestalt approach to adolescent trauma

Abstract

This paper aims to extend McConville’s model of development and therapy with adolescents towards an understanding of the impact of trauma in adolescence. The author examines the adolescent’s experience of trauma from a relational perspective, specifically focusing on the implications of parental influence on the adolescent as she attempts to lay claim to her life. The model identifies three qualities of contact within the adolescent–parent relational field, each with varying degrees of parental capacity to attune to the adolescent’s developmental needs, ranging from supportive to traumatising. The phenomenology of adolescent trauma is explored and a cycle of despair is identified in the adolescent’s selfexperience. The application of this model for understanding and working with traumatised adolescents is demonstrated through the presentation of two case histories.