ABSTRACT
When disembedding from the family field goes well enough, adolescence involves the emergence and deepening of inner experience, a growing awareness of interiority. Supporting the transition from disembedding stage boundary negotiations to interiority-stage awareness is a major dimension of much adolescent psychotherapy. Many of our clients are on the verge of this growth but need a sufficiently safe interpersonal context to support its emergence. Others have opened up their inner worlds in an oppressively private way and need the presence and witness of another person in order to integrate it. With many adolescents, the work of therapy is to help them discover their interiority, a sort of therapeutic involvement that requires high activity and creativity on the part of the therapist. With others, what is required is high receptivity, the simple but powerful offering of a safe environment for articulating, sharing, understanding, and integrating what is silently borne alone by the self.
