This skillfully crafted text by Ron Taffel, PhD, offers a new method of therapeutic engagement with adolescents of the 21st century. In Breaking Through to Teens, Taffel uses his 25 years of expansive clinical experience, along with his personal experience, to develop an approach for working with the group he affectionately calls “the new adolescent”. Taffel’s relational-behavioral approach to therapy focuses on the relational connection between the therapist and the adolescent and uses that relationship to create “true behavioral change in teens” (pp. 27). In the introduction, Taffel conveys the pleasure he gained from writing this book and asserts that it is meant to be an accessible book rather than a heavy text. This is a goal he certainly achieves. He also shares his intention for this book—“I hope this book saves lives. I hope it will be a contribution that empowers therapeutic efforts, work that is humbling to anyone willing to give it a try” (pp. 2). According to Taffel, the necessity for a new therapy for the new and more complex adolescent of today is required to provide the kind of adult relational connection that is often missing in the lives of adolescents and which serves as the foundation for behavioral change tools to be developed and enhanced later in young adulthood.

While Taffel’s assertion that adolescents of today are often lacking in meaningful adult relationships is seemingly accurate, his characterization suggests one specific type of new adolescent. Unfortunately, the adolescent typology Taffel seems to be describing is less heterogeneous than the pluralism of races, creeds, ethnicities and socio-economic statuses that is the American adolescent landscape. Despite this narrow definition of the new adolescent, Breaking Through To Teens is a book that has value as both a comprehensive first read and as a text used for frequent, repeated reference in work with young adults. Structured in a way that provides the background, rationale and implementation of relational-behavioral therapy, this book also includes invaluable real-life examples that reinforce lessons learned and illustrate the strategies employed.

Taffel describes the relational-behavioral model and its emergence from his realizations about the life of the 21st century teen. The “new” adolescent culture, according to Taffel, is one that includes walls of silence between adolescents and adults, the adherence to a celebrity culture mentality as well as ever more rapidly changing fads. Taffel asserts that the therapeutic relationship with adolescents is indeed a critical component to treatment, but that it alone does not create change. A strongly reinforced behavioral focus must also be present. With the joining of these two elements, a strong relationship and a focus on behavioral change, the model is born. Insisting that work with adolescents inherently means work with the family, Taffel places great emphasis on helping families to work through a single, troubling repetitive interaction that occurs in the family, a concept he calls “focused family sessions”. Unlike traditional family therapy, focused family sessions are predicated on setting an advanced goal and helping the family and adolescent to work through one difficult issue at a time.

The book’s first chapter, titled Context, situates the new adolescent in the new treatment paradigm. It is here that Taffel offers his rational for a treatment paradigm that successfully draws on traditional relational and behavioral therapies but combines them in a way that emphasizes the relation of adolescent to adult as the wellspring from which adolescent behavioral change may flow. While Taffel’s “new psychotherapy” seems to be more of a variation of long-standing familiar therapeutic techniques, Taffel does successfully illuminate the changed demands, pressures and realities of today’s teens. He reminds us of realities such as adolescents hiding from and distancing themselves from adults of all kinds, most especially parents, educators, and therapists. To this story, Taffel adds what he calls the new anxieties and new angers of the 21st century teen. The new anxiety, that of coping with the every day, normal, ordinary events of teen life and the new anger, a defiance that is often explosive, require a different therapeutic and parental response. Taffel shows great empathy for parents trying to navigate the “maze of modern childrearing” and ending up in “the new parenting confusion” (pp. 14, 15). Citing challenges such as trying to find a way through the trends of child-rearing over the last 30 years, the omni-presence of celebrities and the role of media in young lives as well as a changing (or some might say less present) informal support system for parents, this book sets forth the difficulties associated with parenting the new adolescent. As another part of the context of understanding the new adolescent and the need for a new therapeutic approach, Taffel also conveys the primacy of the role of “the second family” in the life of a teen. This family, the adolescent’s collective of friends, often becomes the first family in the adolescent years. These contexts, according to Taffel, call for a new compassion. Even if it is thought that adolescents are less “new” than Taffel suggests, his call for sensitivity and compassion on the part of the therapist that recognizes the vulnerabilities and strengths of the adult, adolescent and the two in combination is an undeniably beneficial reminder of the primacy of relationships as the foundation to enhancing the adolescent’s capacity. The new compassion that Taffel argues for is one that leaves young adults feeling heard and understood. It is a compassion that eases young adults into the complexities of adulthood by providing as much knowledge and information as they require and want.

Nearing the end of the first chapter, Taffel advances a more full explanation of the relational-behavioral therapy model and provides 10 treatment myths that help therapists and parents remember what to leave behind in working with the new adolescent. From there, using flexible confidentiality (discussed in detail) and focused family sessions with the adolescents’ family, teens and parents learn specific strategies and behaviors such as “saying it with feelings” and reinforcing a young person’s creativity and abilities that can lead to positive, healthy change.

Throughout the following chapters, the book paves the path to understanding and being able to implement relational-behavioral therapy by discussing what a first session looks like, including the necessary elements to beginning to build a helping relationship with adolescents. As stories of teens and their journeys through the therapeutic interaction illustrate the process and techniques, so too Taffel skillfully uses highlighting text boxes to draw the reader’s attention to key elements and to make future reference convenient and quick. Taffel converses with the reader and uses a light-hearted approach to elevate constructs that deserve attention because they may represent not previously considered ideas or concepts related to the new adolescent.

Using accessible language and a client centered approach, the book continues past the first four chapters to further detail specific elements of the relational-behavioral approach. In Chap 5 advice is discussed and advanced as a useful and appropriate tool for assisting adolescents in changing behaviors and attitudes. Here, the question is not whether advice should be given to teens but how advice is to be offered. Offering three specific catch phrases, “Here’s What I think,” “It’s Your Choice” and “This Is What Will Happen If” can help the therapist offer solid, sound advice that the new adolescent may be more likely to hear and integrate.

In Chap 6, Taffel discusses the often unspoken yet well known reality that sometimes clients do not tell the truth, and adolescents as clients are no exception. The untold truths or little white lies that invariably show themselves can create significant barriers to the therapeutic process. As Taffel normalizes the behavior of lying as a common and expected occurrence in the therapeutic interaction, the reader can then move on to appreciate the shared wisdom about how to approach the lies and untold truths within the adolescent–adult interaction. By attending to the small red flags that may serve as signals and listening for specific details, the therapist/parent may recognize a need to confront the young person’s omissions as well as spoken untruths. Cleverly naming this space “the grey zone”, Taffel ends this poignant chapter with a text box that includes a therapist test, enabling readers to assess their own areas of strength and challenge related to their ability to receive grey zone information from the adolescents with whom they work.

Taffel advances the path of relational-behavioral therapy by talking about a concept he calls “flexible confidentiality”. This concept, introduced at the beginning of treatment, allows a family and the adolescent in partnership with the therapist to see themselves working collectively in a behaviorally self-reinforcing cycle. Just as the name suggests, flexible confidentiality honors the ethical and legal confines of the traditional notion of confidentiality. However, flexible confidentiality also recognizes that some information needs to be shared in order to assist in building bridges between parents and adolescents during the treatment process.

In one of the last chapters of the book, Taffel provides solid parenting advice and sets the stage for a practical discussion of how to conduct the goal-specific focused family sessions. This critical element in relational-behavioral therapy is discussed in great detail, including a constructed narrative of sessions between therapist, family member(s) and adolescent. These examples are a tremendous aid to the reader in understanding the implementation of this therapeutic strategy.

After a brief discussion of the value of allowing friends to compliment an adolescent’s therapeutic journey, Taffel ends the book in much the same way he started—that is, to suggest that adolescents are changing and complex (three dimensional) beings who deserve and will only tolerate real adult interactions. By suggesting ways to become and stay real, Taffel’s spirit as a clinician, parent and author shines through. He calls the clinician to task by asking for the kind of self evaluation that is both necessary and of highest value in therapeutic interaction. Taffel suggests that it is through the examination of the transformations of self experienced by the therapist that the greatest revelations about the progress, healing and change by the adolescent are to be discovered. As Taffel wisely notes in the book’s concluding paragraph, “In the end, then, it is not just about the kids. It is about us as people, parents and child professionals (pp. 281)”.

Leaving this text is like leaving a good professional workshop or conference. You are inspired, reminded of old concepts, enlightened by old concepts in new frames and interested in learning more about new concepts just introduced. You have smiled or grinned, been challenged to think and perhaps even made a new friend. Social workers, psychologists, parents, and those whose work gives them the honor of interacting with adolescents all stand to gain from this inspiring new approach to our new adolescents.