ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors suggest that the concept of the therapeutic alliance tasks and the treatment goals of parental restoration to the path of progressive adult development within the context of their child's or adolescent's treatment provide the beginning of such a model. They describe how adult patients may use their significant others as objects for externahzation of important functions of the internalized parent representations. The authors analyses the case of Smeeton Mark, a suicidal adolescent who, after a difficult beginning phase, developed an interest in the workings of his own mind and began to enjoy hopes and plans, all markers of entry for the individual patient into the middle phase of treatment. Once parents' fear of loss can be addressed, children and adolescents usually settle into the long middle phase of work exploring the intrapsychic world. The pretermination phase is seldom written about in the psychoanalytic literature.
