Published in

British Gestalt Journal. Copyright 2007 by Gestalt Publications Ltd. 2007, Vol. 16, No. 2, 19±27

Abstract

This article describes a Gestalt approach to working with adolescents in an NHS child and adolescent mental health clinic. The importance of a dialogic phenomenological relationship is emphasised, as well as an experimental attitude using age-appropriate practical tools. The functional role of anger in helping adolescents disembed from the family ®eld is illustrated with vignettes. A longer case example shows work using creative arts modalities with a school phobic boy disabled by panic.

Keywords

CAMHS, creative arts modalities, music, fathering.

“I can’t be bothered to miss you anymore

Month twelve, day thirty-one and hour twenty-four

I used to think if missed hard enough you’d come back for sure

I can’t be bothered now to miss you anymore”