This book is about boyfriends and girlfriends – getting them, keeping them and moving on from them. Young people put enormous energy into these processes: they worry, they hope, they conspire and they cry because, in a sense, having a boyfriend or girlfriend is about much more than just having a boyfriend or girlfriend.
Using dozens of recognisable vignettes, Luxmoore movingly describes his work with young people. In particular, he explores the dramatic conflict between young people’s loving and hating as they move from the intimacy of relationships with parents to relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends, frantically negotiating sex and sexuality, the meaning of love, faithfulness and unfaithfulness and many other issues vital to the adults these young people will become.
The book will be essential reading for professionals and parents struggling with the ferocity of young people’s feelings where ‘I love you!’ and ‘I hate you!’ are never far apart.
Using dozens of recognisable vignettes, Luxmoore movingly describes his work with young people. In particular, he explores the dramatic conflict between young people’s loving and hating as they move from the intimacy of relationships with parents to relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends, frantically negotiating sex and sexuality, the meaning of love, faithfulness and unfaithfulness and many other issues vital to the adults these young people will become.
The book will be essential reading for professionals and parents struggling with the ferocity of young people’s feelings where ‘I love you!’ and ‘I hate you!’ are never far apart.
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Reviews
His analysis of the subject is clear and he uses his wide knowledge of theory to connect the writing... This book is a snapshot of life for teenagers in love and hate and offers an analytical exploration of the subject.
For educational psychologists (EPs) interested in psychodynamic and therapeutic approaches to the emotional support of children and young people, it is an essential read.
His new publication did not disappoint. Luxmoore seeks to explore the personal nuances and meanings for young people of getting, keeping and moving on from having a boyfriend or girlfriend> a central experience of adolescence, but one coyly neglected in much professional literature.
He (the author) offers a thoughtful and insightful look into the psychology of young relationships and glimpses into this therapeutic counselling technique...the author's examples of his work provide a vivid picture of the respect, patience and curiosity essential for any form of therapy. This book will prove highly useful for beginning therapists so they can learn about therapeutic stance...the author offers a well-written, refreshing look at the psychology of love and hate as important features in a young person's development. It is a good addition to the shelf of novice and experienced professionals. As the youth of the world changes, re-reading this book will offer a glance at our cultural evolution.`
The first thing to say is that the book is a huge pleasure to read. Luxmoore moves the authorial lens smoothly from closely-observed, film-like pieces of 'action' to quitter passages of reflection. The book is in five parts, and one of the many satisfactions it offers, is this almost symphonic form itself. I found that when I took Young People in Love and in Hate away with me on holiday it quickly became the property of my own adolescent children. They read the 'best bits' out to each other...Luxmoore strikes a balance between taking his young clients and their external situations with proper seriousness, and offering to loosen the underlying anxiety they bring through an opportunity to play. ..In these sections of the book, the reader can more readily identify with these powerful feeling states, which will be only too familiar to anyone who works closely with adolescents...I feel excited by this, and it is no exaggeration to say that Luxmoore is one of today's answers to Donald Winnicott. He has the gift of writing for different audiences, and he has a belief that all this psychoanalytic insight and understanding is too useful to be kept as the preserve of the privileged few who have a psychotherapy or a training themselves. He wants to bring the thinking out into the world, and in this book, perhaps even more clearly that in his previous works, he does so...It is the material in this book - the stories, the moments described movingly from life - that make it thoroughly compelling. Characters like Vinnie, Jono and Freya erupt off the page. What Luxmoore brings to all these dramas is a kind of practised, unintrusive curiosity about things in their lives, tempered by an important set of understandings about the acute narcissistic vulnerability oif adolescents...This apparently artless approach may sound easy. Don't be fooled. It is the result of long experience, the courage to become technically free, while remaining analytically thoughtful, and a certain professional humility, in which being ordinary is more valuable than being clever.
This man knows how to communicate with young people, and understand their perspectives about what is happening in their lives, without losing his 'adult' perspective as well. Any social worker who has been told by a young person that they 'just don't understand' what it is like to be a young person, or what is important to a teenager really ought to read this book.