Psychological Circles which follows puberty and begins around the age of fourteen. There are three periods of adolescence: early, middle and post-adolescence, or the young adult age.
This period ends around the age of twenty-five. Adolescence is marked by turbulent changes, first physical and then psychical. Physical development is not always followed by psychical development of equal speed and quality, which causes a whole range of developmentally normative problems.
The main characteristic of adolescence is the need to establish personal identity, originating, as a rule, in efforts to preserve one’s dignity when faced with problems arising from being in new situations, to achieve social status which at that age is more important than status within the family, to create successful emotional and sexual relationships, and to choose the right job.
These serious requirements cause a whole range of problems for adolescents. Speaking of their behavior, the problems include conflicts with parents which start over seemingly unimportant things and intensify to the point where they cannot be overcome, aggression, occasional fits of fury, bad school reports and many unexcused absences from classes, as well as watching TV, playing computer games and surfing the Internet for hours.
As for the inner, psychic problems, they comprise depression, apathy, difficulty concentrating and studying, adolescents’ feelings of not being understood and of not belonging to any group, either family or peers, loneliness, isolation, or, on the other hand, spending too much time with friends.
In trying to reduce the psychical tension they are constantly exposed to, adolescents sometimes use alcohol or psychoactive substances or turn to auto-destructive forms of behavior.
Psychotherapy of adolescents means individual work with adolescents in the first place, but it can include consultations with parents if the child agrees to it. The work aims to reestablish adolescent’s sagging self-esteem and self-confidence, as well as to secure family relations endangered by the fast growth of the adolescent which parents sometimes cannot properly follow no matter how much they wish to.
Weekly psychotherapeutic sessions lasting 45 minutes are adapted to each adolescent’s school timetable. If needed, individual work is combined with family counseling, guided by a family counselor.
Center for Applied Psyhology is realizing programs for professional improvement that have acreditations from Institut for schooling and educational for school year 2008/2009 among which is the program "Adolescence-Psychology, Psychopathology, Prevetion", cat. no.474 realized by specialists from "Psychological Circles".
