ABSTRACT
The benefits to adolescent patients of such a rapprochement go beyond treating those who do not respond to medications and enhancing domains of functioning that medicines do not affect. Perhaps the most obvious is the possibility of reducing known and as yet unidentified, long-term adverse effects of medicines on healthy development. It has been suggested that the news media tends to report published studies of medication utilization in children with a negative bias. The therapeutic relationship helps create optimal conditions in which the adolescent patient’s ego can function in treatment. It is a necessary condition for effective therapy, but, as just noted, often not sufficient to reverse all symptoms and allow the resumption of progressive development. The insight-oriented dimension of the therapy often begins by identifying clinical paradigms relevant to the individual patient. Advocating psychodynamic psychotherapy might strike some as anachronistic or atavistic at best, and cavalier at worst.
