AAMFT At Home Series: Maurizio Andolfi

Listening to Teen Voices in Family Therapy

“Teenagers are more at risk in fragmented and toxic society where family disintegration, single parenthood and absent fathers are becoming the norm. Unresolved parental and intergenerational conflicts and marginalization along with the deleterious impact of social media are damaging adolescents’ health development, resulting in a variety of symptoms and disorders” (Assisi Manifesto, 2023)

In this webinar, Maurizio Andolfi will outline the essential need to listen to youth voices in therapy without prejudice and labelling. Their voice, sometimes arrogant or bizarre, angry or provocative, are often a despaired cry for love and care. By showing a video of a life family session from the Academia Multimedia Collection, Andolfi will illustrate how to build an alliance with a withdrawn teenager with the use of relational questions in presence of his mother and his maternal grandparents. The connection between the” lock door” of the child with other lock doors in the past will be outlines as well as the child’s need to “open doors” to reach out to his father to overcome his sense of loneliness.