‘To dream is to live’

In the book’s final chapter, the author begins with a brief overview of adolescent development and the challenges that arise due to the rapid physical and psychological changes during this period. This sets the stage for the crucial question of how clinicians can effectively engage with adolescents in crisis. The author emphasises the importance of self-reflection, encouraging readers to identify and understand the fragmented parts of their patients that have been projected onto the clinician. This involves the therapist’s psychic ability to regress and experience the most difficult aspects of the patient’s experience. The chapter then transitions to its main section, where the author shares various clinical experiences. He suggests different modes of representation, such as ‘playful action,’ the use of metaphors, the capacity to dream through metaphor, interpretation, and sharing one’s metaphorical fantasies with patients. These methods, shown through clinical material, are proposed as ways to connect with and understand adolescents in crisis more deeply, helping to construct and make meaning of their experiences, moving away from bodily acting out to more psychic working through. The chapter concludes with an overview of the discussed concepts and their connections to various theories that have informed the author’s work. These include Bion’s theories, the theory of figurability by Botella and Botella, Antonino Ferro’s theories on reverie and dreaming, and Winnicott’s contributions on ‘continuity of being’ and ‘holding’ environment.