Psychoanalytic Reflections on Parenting Teens and Young Adults ― Changing Patterns in Modern Love, Loss, and Longing

Psychoanalytic Reflections on Parenting Teens and Young Adults explores the rich, multi-layered parent-child interactions that unfold during the period of separation and launching. While this is a necessary transitional time, parents inevitably experience feelings of loss and longing for the past as well as hope for the future.

With honesty, humor and originality, the book brings together the voices of psychoanalysts, speaking frankly not just as professionals, but also as parents grappling with raising young adults in today’s fast-paced world. The contributors reflect on the joys, regrets and surprises, and the challenges and triumphs they experience as their children reach the threshold of young adulthood. They address a wide range of topics relevant to parents and practitioners alike-indeed to all those who are closely involved with the growth and maturation of today’s youth. Offering both a broad perspective and an intimate look at present-day parenting dilemmas, the chapters focus on five main areas of interest, including: raising youth in the digital age, developmental difficulties, evolving gender norms, social concerns and, finally, the building of resiliency.

Psychoanalytic Reflections on Parenting Teens and Young Adults offers an alternative lens to consider the complex challenges parents face in raising today’s teens and young adults, replacing the customary notion of "failure to launch" with the concept of "holding on with open arms." The explorations in this book advance the idea that in the end, these struggles are essential for growth, buoyancy and wisdom. It will appeal greatly to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as family therapists.

Anne J. Adelman is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society and the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. She is a faculty member of the New Directions Writing Program and maintains a private practice in Chevy Chase, MD, USA.