Abstract
During adolescence the peer group plays a major role in facilitating developmental processes, since it not only serves as a replacement for childhood love-objects and attachments, but offers the adolescent allies in the struggle to separate and become emancipated from parents. For those adolescents who, because of interpersonal and intrapsychic difficulties, have no peer group or have chosen an inappropriate peer group, providing a therapeutic group can make it possible for development to proceed. This paper presents not only a theoretical basis for the utilization of groups of peers in the treatment of adolescents, but also an elaboration on the dynamic processes which make possible improvement of ego-functioning and resolution of core conflicts related to the past, as well as to this particular developmental phase.
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Wyman, R. The analytic group: A multifaceted approach to the treatment of adolescents. Group 5, 17–30 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01456744
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01456744