The Fragile Alliance: An Orientation to the Psychiatric Treatment of the Adolescent

From the authors: We both hope that you will find The Fragile Alliance helpful as you undertake the difficult but rewarding task of treating adolescents in emotional crisis. The presentation continues to be basically a clinical, "how to" approach offered with the understanding that our suggestions reflect to some extent idiosyncrasies of the authors and will not fit every therapist. However, the suggestions and directions are presented with the hope that they will stimulate thought and provide some sense of direction which individual therapists can then modify to fit their particular patient population and their own personal style. Some of our material, which did not fit comfortably in the text of the chapters, has been organized into sidebars. This material, located in boxes, is the kind of information that a supervisor might say as an aid to a student. The clinical material has been disguised. The names and other identifying data have been changed. Most of the clinical vignettes are composites of several actual cases.