ABSTRACT
Termination—a phase, a state, a special treatment goal—is especially significant for adolescent patients who need to separate emotionally from preoedipal and postoedipal parental objects. From a relational point of view, however, the treatment goal in working with traumatized adolescents is to focus primarily not on separating from primary objects but on nurturing and enabling the adolescent to develop new and more nuanced relationships with significant others. The aim is to foster a mutuality between parents and adolescents that allows increased autonomy alongside dependency as well to enhance many kinds of relationships. Since repetition of old relational patterns is inevitable, relational analysts (Gordon et al., 1998), following Pizer (1992, 1996), believe that therapeutic progression depends on the analyst and the patient being able to "find new and more flexible ways to move beyond these repetitions, to free up their relationship, and to construct and negotiate new ways of being with each other" (Gordon et al., 1998, p. 51).
