ABSTRACT
The most powerful social therapeutic intervention for working with adolescents is family therapy. The existence of a disturbed adolescent in a family serves as the silent canary does in a mine—it is a tipoff that there are problems in the system. Family therapy is an approach that transforms dysfunctional interactional patterns between significant individuals and social forces in a person's life. The adolescents dealing with severe developmental problems respond best to a family therapy approach. There are a number of common issues that surface frequently in the patients: Identity; Social Competence; Adolescent Narcissism; and Separation. Family therapy can enhance social competence by transforming the adolescent's indwelling social rules of interaction. In addressing the issues of social competence, family therapy truly becomes an ecological therapy. Family therapy deals with dysfunctional narcissism by attempting to create for the adolescent the experience of developmental estrangement.
