Adolescence
by
ROBERT ATKINSON
University of Southern Maine

I. Adolescence as a Developmental Stage

II. Adolescent Selves

Ill. The Core Adolescent

GLOSSARY

Formal operations   Piaget’s last stage of cognitive development, during which logical, abstract, and hypothetical thought processes are possible

Identity   Gradual process of developing a clear sense of self-direction, self-understanding, and a commitment to moral, political, and vocational values

Puberty   Stage of biological growth during which the individual becomes physiologically capable of sexually reproducing

Rite of passage   Initiation or experience through which one gains recognition of having attained a new status or role in life

Self-image   Way in which individuals feel about themselves

ADOLESCENCE IS A PSYCHO-SOCIAL-BIOLOGICAL stage of development occurring between childhood and adulthood. It usually starts with puberty and ends when the person gains a reasonable degree of parental independence. This can be a complex, challenging, and sometimes confusing transformation, largely because there are no longer clearly defined lines between these developmental stages as there once was when socially prescribed rites of passage separated these periods of life. Significant growth in biological, cognitive, and psychosocial areas is universal among teenagers, but individual timing and understanding of what is occurring vary greatly. The length of adolescence itself also varies greatly; it can include the ages from 12 to 20, or even beyond. While puberty and sexual maturation, abstract thinking, and forming an identity were once thought to be the source of considerable conflict and stress for the adolescent, recent research shows that adolescence is no more a period of turmoil for the vast majority than is any other time of life. While a great range of personal experience and adjustment patterns is evident during the teen years, adolescents do share a commonality in confronting the same developmental tasks of adjusting to their new bodies, their new ways of thinking, and their maturing identity.

I. ADOLESCENCE AS A DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE

A. Cultural Background

In traditional cultures of the past, initiation ceremonies, or rites of passage, were used to guide the individual through the necessary transition from one social status or life stage to another. Marriages and funerals are two common examples of this. At around the onset of menarche for girls and puberty for boys, a special puberty rite was held to initiate the youth into adulthood. Upon completion of this dramatic and often perilous ordeal, which included tests of bravery and endurance as well as separation from one’s family and community, the youth would return a new person, an adult with a new status and new responsibilities. In this cultural context adolescence usually did not exist at all, and if it did it was clearly a liminal, or limbo, period that lasted anywhere from a few days to a few months. The important point about these community-wide ceremonies is that they made it very clear how the youth was to become an adult and exactly when this transition would take place, as well as when it was completed.

B. Historical Background

The popular concept of adolescence began to take shape in the 18th century. Prior to this, the average life span was considerably shorter than it is today, and the help of people of all ages was needed in the work force, both of which made adolescence a very short period of life. Compulsory public education, however, began to extend the adolescent years while obscuring the distinctions among childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. This also caused confusion among the terms "puer," "juvenile," "adolescent," "teenager," and "youth." Only "adolescent" implies change and process, while the others refer to status or product.

In 1904, C. Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, published the first comprehensive study of adolescence. In his two-volume work, Adolescence, Hall introduced the phrase "sturm und drang" (i.e., "storm and stress") to characterize the development of adolescents. He took this concept from the German romanticists, primarily Goethe and Schiller, who focused on idealism, rebellion against established ways, and the expression of deep passion. This became referred to as "adolescent turmoil" and was accepted as typical for all adolescents, even though Hall’s work was based on his own personal unsystematic observations.

It is now widely accepted that adolescence does present a special burden to the individual experiencing it, but it is seen equally as a challenge and an opportunity. The youth, even with an unclear beginning and ending point in the journey to adulthood, has to individuate, establish self-confidence, make important decisions concerning the future, and become independent from attachments to parents. The majority of teenagers do this well. By no means, however, is adolescence being made out to be an easy time, any more than life as a whole is easy. Adolescence is a period of rapid and profound change in the body and the mind. It is a time to find out who one is and where one is going in the future. Most conflict, particularly the family bickering that increases during this time, is useful to the adolescent in that it contributes to developing a sense of individuality. The turmoil that Hall and Freud emphasize, though, is only relevant today to a small subgroup of the adolescent population that includes psychiatric patients, juvenile delinquents, and other social deviants.

D. Contemporary Approaches to the Transition of Adolescence

One thing missing for today’s teenagers that was central in the life of all those in a traditional community is a socially prescribed, culturally meaningful rite of passage. This loss of tradition, this breakdown of significant symbols to live by, is one of the primary contributors to not only the floundering of youth, but the breakdown of society in general. Without clearly defined guidelines to assist one in a difficult passage of life, that transition will be met with confusion, uncertainty, and inconclusiveness.

In an effort to provide what is missing for today’s adolescents, some in the helping professions are simulating traditional rites of passage experiences in therapeutic and educational settings to help teenagers better understand themselves and their world as a result of the transition they are undergoing. Such contemporary versions of the rite of passage, or vision quest, allow the teenager to experience a modern equivalent of what was a difficult passage but which had a clear purpose and end point. These rites of passage were designed to facilitate a necessary transformation that had to take place prior to the youth being able to assume adult responsibilities in the community. The contemporary versions are seen as creative approaches to the necessary crises of adolescence, which guide teenagers through the same three elements of the ageless pattern, defined variously as separation— initiation—return or, simply, beginning—middle— resolution. The result of experiencing this pattern in one’s life is an important feeling of accomplishment. Traditional youth and contemporary adolescents both know from living this pattern that their transition has been successful and complete.

Adolescents today who participate in such a structured, experiential exercise live out a symbolic adventure which brings alive timeless mythological motifs and archetypes for them. This can provide them with an even more meaningful, purposesful, and well-defined journey into adulthood than most other secular or sacred transitions they will experience in today’s world because their overall place and role in their life and development are made very clear. Contemporary rituals are designed primarily to serve the same function as traditional rites of passage, to guide the individual to a deeper understanding of himself or herself in relation to others and the world so they are better prepared to carry out their adult roles and responsibilities.

II. ADOLESCENT SELVES

A. Background

Even though the self is regarded as that which a person really and intrinsically is, the self is also seen as having successive and varying states of consciousness. In other words, there are many selves developing at varying levels simultaneously. William James, one of the first to explain this, held that each of the selves that constitutes the person has its own vulnerability, its own time of ascendancy, and its own reason for being. For James, the self consists of three parts: the material self (one’s body), the social self (one’s roles and relationships), and the spiritual self (one’s inner or subjective being). The growth and development of these selves throughout the adolescent years are particularly important. Individually, they provide an effective way to view adolescent development since the adolescent is more likely than the adult to have many selves competing for recognition and calling for ultimate integration. Adolescence is a time of trying out new roles, discarding or retaining old roles, and establishing a sense of coherence. A major goal of adolescent development is to achieve a balanced stable integration of selves that a teenager becoming an adult can own as "myself." Collectively, these selves are integrated to form a total self from which a person draws a many-layered answer to the question "Who Am I?". [See Development of the Self.]

B. The Biological Self

According to Sigmund Freud, the young adolescent is coming out of a latency period during which psychosexual activities were secondary to new social interests. With adolescence, however, a gradual resurgence of sexuality occurs following the onset of puberty. This new capacity for sexual reproduction requires that the adolescent master sexual and aggressive drives in socially acceptable ways. The biological and physical changes that accompany adolescence also bring about an awakening of new feelings toward one’s own body. [See Psychoanalytic Theory.]

Puberty is a complex process, typically beginning between the ages of 9 and 14, which is characterized by a physical growth spurt and the maturation of primary and secondary sex characteristics. It not only has a biological impact on the adolescent, but psychological and social ones as well. A growth spurt, first in weight, then in height and strength, can occur at the rate of 3.5 inches for a girl to 4 inches for a boy during the year of fastest growth. The sex organs grow larger, and menarche in girls and ejaculation in boys usually signal reproductive potential, although peak fertility is reached several years later. Secondary sex characteristics (i.e., breasts; pubic, facial, and body hair; even changes in voice) appear for both boys and girls at varying times. [See Puberty.]

During these pubertal changes, more calories and vitamins are needed than at any other time in life. This is a highly critical time nutritionally as unbalanced diets can prevent normal growth. The serious, sometimes life-threatening, problem of anorexia nervosa, or self-starving, has become a well-publicized issue for some teens, especially girls.

The timing of sexual maturation, or the age at which an individual reaches and passes through pubertal changes, varies considerably and is determined by the individual’s gender, genes, body type, and nutrition. Boys, thin children, and malnourished children typically reach puberty later than their counterparts. Usually, boys are about 6 months behind girls, with the average girl reaching menarche at about age 12~ and the average boy ejaculating at age 13. Nevertheless, hormone signals from the brain (i.e., the hypothalamus) to the pituitary gland to the gonads always occur in the same sequence, creating a similar pattern of pubertal events for most young people.

Among the effects of early and late maturation can be significant differences in psychological adjustment. These relate most to body image, moods, relationships with parents and members of the opposite sex, and even school achievement. Recent studies have found that being early or late to mature can affect adolescents’ satisfaction with their appearance and their body image. For seventh- and eighth-graders especially, girls who were physically more mature were generally less satisfied with their weight and appearance than their less mature classmates. While girls tend not to like being early to mature, and even become embarrassed and ashamed, boys, on the other hand, feel better if they are early maturers.

More physically mature boys tend to be more satisfied with their weight and overall appearance than their less mature peers. Developing earlier can give some boys a feeling of superiority. Boys who reach puberty usually report positive moods more often than their prepubertal male classmates. For girls, puberty often affects how they get along with their parents. Girls whose physical development is advanced tend to talk less to their parents and have less positive feelings about family relationships than do less developed girls. Early maturers also tend to get higher grades than later maturers in the same class.

While boys and girls have opposite feelings about their pubertal changes (i.e., generally it is a positive experience for boys), these feelings are usually temporary and balance out over the years. The biological

events of puberty and adolescence cannot be changed, but the social and cultural attitudes toward variations in these events can become less rigid, which could make the adolescent’s passage to adulthood even smoother. Normal biological development during adolescence includes primarily adjusting to pubertal changes, maintaining healthy relationships with parents and peers, establishing a healthy body image, and adopting age-appropriate sexual attitudes.

C. The Cognitive Self

The intellectual maturation that takes place on an inner level for the adolescent is more subtle than biological changes, but just as important. Taken together, changes in thinking, along with earlier physiological changes of puberty, constitute what can be seen as a "psychic revolution." Cognitive development in adolescence signals the beginning of a new level of thought in which a greater reasoning and problem-solving capacity prepares the maturing teenager to become a philosopher of sorts, able to speculate, hypothesize, fantasize, and build elaborate systems of thought.

The most influential cognitive theorist is Piaget, whose stage-based view is that when adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 reach the level of formal operational thought, they gain the ability to think logically. Scientific principles can be articulated, logical arguments can be engaged in, and social problems can be reasoned about, while drawing implications from many related propositions. Adolescents are thus capable of combining thought processes into self-reflection about vocational goals, personal satisfaction, and social responsibility. Maturing adolescents can utilize whatever innate or acquired knowledge they have, as well as newly developed capacities for logic, orderly analysis, and reflection. They thereby give greater cohesiveness and meaning to experience. For Piaget, mental life evolves toward a final form of equilibrium. The self becomes a true personality as self-reflective thoughts and feelings are integrated into a total life perspective.

With formal operational thought comes the tendency toward a particular form of egocentrism. For adolescents this takes the form of overestimating their significance to others. Because they can conceptualize the thoughts of others as well as their own, they might falsely assume that other people are preoccupied with their thoughts or behavior, resulting in a self-consciousness about physical appearance and interpersonal behavior. Adolescents also tend to create an imaginary audience in social settings that gives them the illusion of being under constant scrutiny. Egocentrism can also give young adolescents a sense of the heroic or mythical with the creation of a personal fable, or a sense of being immune to the laws of mortality and probability through creating an invincibility fable. Thus, adolescent thought processes are usually a mixture of the abilities to imagine many logical possibilities and to try to reshape reality when it interferes with hopes and fantasies. This heightened sense of self-consciousness usually peaks at about age 13 and diminishes during late adolescence.

There is also a relationship between formal thinking and moral development, or moral reasoning. Being able to imagine alternative solutions to various problems in science, logic, or social issues means being able to apply the same types of mental processes to thinking about right and wrong. Moral judgments, and their development through stages, are an interdependent component of cognitive developmental stages. Formal operational thought, or cognitive maturity, is usually a necessary but insufficient condition for principled morality. As a result, adolescents gradually come to see moral questions more broadly, loosening their hold on narrow personal interests while gradually looking at the values of their society and beyond. The tendency is for young people to reason at a higher level about moral issues in their own experience, or about those issues they have discussed with others. Giving adolescents the chance to discuss moral issues and to make their own moral choices can help them develop more complex ethical and moral thinking. Thus, the highest level of moral understanding (i.e., postconventional) is sometimes available to certain adolescents if principled morality is part of their experience.

A difference between the way males and females make moral judgments is also usually evident. Most girls and women tend to base their moral choices on the human relationships involved. Care and responsibility are the primary considerations for females, whereas it is usually rights and rules for males. These differences are not absolute, nor is one necessarily better than the other. The best moral thinking would synthesize both approaches.

Cognitive maturity would enable adolescents to arrive at more rational and healthy decisions concerning the major issues they face, such as sexuality, nutrition, substance use, and delinquency. The intellectual growth of the teenager includes the ability not only to memorize and recite ideas, but to think reflectively about those ideas and about one’s self as well. Because of its expansiveness, adolescent thinking is well be-

yond childhood thinking. For the adolescent, a world of possibilities opens, both concrete and abstract, real and hypothetical. The distinction between false and true is more evident; thoughts about thoughts, meditative reflection, and introspection occur; and thoughts about the future, planning and exploring personal career options, begin in earnest, while other horizons broaden, including religion, justice, and identity.

D. The Psychosocial Self

As the adolescent moves closer to maturity, certain dimensions of adequacy become more important. First, there is a sense of individual maturity, which includes self-control, self-esteem, and self-initiative. Next is interpersonal maturity, covering the ability to communicate, trust, and understand and manage relationships with others. Finally, there is social maturity requiring a general openness to the idea that things change and an acceptance or tolerance of differences among people. Thus, the psychosocial self means the total configuration of the individual and the personality mechanisms that integrate him or her.

A coherent sense of personal identity is the broadest expression of successful mastery of these areas. Successful identity formation can be characterized as the process of gradually bringing into accord the variety of changing self-images that have been experienced during childhood. Identity is therefore the bridge between individual and social reality that gives the individual a sense of meaningfulness and self-continuity. Identity eventually includes establishing a sexual, political, moral, religious, and vocational identity that gives one a sense of direction, commitment, trust in a personal ideal, and individual uniqueness. Identity achievement, or the resolution of the identity crisis accompanied by a healthy secure sense of self, might not occur until adulthood or until the values and goals set by parents and society have been fully explored and accepted or abandoned on one’s own.

The dangers for the adolescent are role confusion (i.e., a failure to arrive at a consistent, coherent, and integrated identity) and identity diffusion (i.e., an inability to commit oneself, even in late adolescence, to an occupation or ideological position and assume a responsible stance in life). While some identity confusion is considered to be a normative and necessary experience, protracted confusion can lead to disturbance and possible pathology. Another danger for the adolescent is negative identity, or adopting the opposite of what parents and society expect, because this can lead to a debased self-image and social role. Finally, another less obvious problem that can sometimes have a delayed reaction is that of foreclosure, or committing to an identity or vocational role too early without sufficiently exploring alternatives. A moratorium, or "time-out" specifically for self-exploration and experimentation with alternative identities, can sometimes be extremely valuable.

Religious beliefs, values, and a sense of one’s spiritual nature can become more clearly focused during late adolescence. Traditionally, the adolescent years were when societies would clarify religious beliefs for the individual through specially designed initiation ceremonies, such as the vision quest. Today, while the Christian confirmation or the Jewish bar mitzvah would be the equivalent, more adolescents seem to be less drawn to strict observance of religious customs. The tendency, however, especially during late adolescence, is toward an independent search for truth, a reexamination and reevaluation of many of the beliefs and values they have grown up with. After a period of exploration, a more personalized spiritual orientation, usually toward their original affiliation, is often the result.

The self, self-knowledge, and self-image therefore become primary issues during adolescence. Important shifts occur in the way teenagers think about and characterize themselves. Their self-conceptions become more sophisticated and differentiated, often consisting of abstract, psychological, and interpersonal descriptors. Teenagers become more interested in understanding themselves and why they behave the way they do or what influences shaped their personality. They become concerned with matters of confidence, the ability to perform well, a sense of worth, a sense of personal control, low levels of anxiety, and feeling good about one’s self. These, in fact, are the components of a good self-concept and are also important contributors to psychological well-being.

Self-image, or how one sees one’s self, is therefore an extremely crucial aspect of the psychosocial self, as well as the biological and cognitive selves. Based on recent studies, while adolescents’ feelings about themselves fluctuate, and actual self-image might be lower during the early adolescent years, generally self-image gradually becomes stable and more positive by late adolescence. Older adolescents are more self-confident, more open to the feelings and opinions of others, and seem to have a more balanced view of their families than do younger adolescents. This reflects the common notion that adolescence encompasses a process of increasing maturity, knowledge, and self-confidence.

E. Gender Issues in Adolescence

It is true that the adolescent experience is not the same for females as it is for males in regard to biological development or emotional development. Only in the mid-1970s did researchers begin to question such differences and to look at how girls grow and develop. Prior to this, research subjects consisted mostly of males, and it was assumed that what was found to be true for boys was also true for girls.

Current research shows, however, that there can be many important differences. In early adolescence, girls begin to have their own unique struggles, with depression, body image, eating disorders, and lower self-esteem and self-confidence. They also begin to lose their own voice, think less of their own needs, and make their priority the relationship itself. The passage to womanhood for girls is often a journey into silence and disconnection. As they move from early adolescence into middle and late adolescence, girls are more likely to let themselves live with the pain of a relationship than trying to end it. Girls seem to be influenced by conventional thought that says women should be concerned about others at all costs, even to themselves. Boys, on the other hand, tend to take care of themselves first.

Girls, therefore, may face the additional developmental task, more so than boys, of learning how to maintain their own voice while still having healthy relationships with others. In order to be successful at this, researchers have found that girls may need to be in engaging relationships with others, particularly their mothers, where they are allowed and encouraged to speak their mind and to fight for what they believe, if necessary. They may need to be actively supported in finding and speaking in their own voice.

Identity development may be different for girls for the same reason. If girls are more concerned with their relationship with others, and maintaining that at whatever cost, what can get lost in the process is a clear sense of self, which is the essence of a positive identity. Instead of getting to know their own values, beliefs, and goals in life, they could overlook these in favor of keeping a relationship with others going. Again, girls may have to make more of an effort than boys to be honest with themselves and to explore their own interests and needs in order to arrive at an understanding of their own values and goals by the time they come out of adolescence so that they will have developed a sense of personal identity.

III. THE CORE ADOLESCENT

Because adolescents experience the same biological, cognitive, and psychosocial changes and face the same developmental tasks, it is
reasonable to expect that certain aspects of their experience will be common to all adolescents. Because of the growing number of studies using self-report questionnaires, even internationally, areas in which the adolescent experience is similar are now identifiable.

A. Universal Aspects of the Adolescent Experience

When attempts to understand adolescents are made using standard psychological measurements, many common developmental patterns, as well as feelings, concerns, and interests, are found. In fact, adolescents seem to have little difficulty understanding each other. Teenagers today have a body of knowledge that is shared across many cultures, due largely to the emergence of what can be seen as a world culture. With television and other media often having global audiences, one event or idea can influence an entire global cohort of adolescents in the same way at the same time. Recent empirical studies have verified that, worldwide, today’s teenagers do share a collective personality as well as a collective consciousness. They have assimilated common elements of human nature, culture, and civilization, as well as a common pattern of meanings that have been dispersed and spread throughout the world. The media transmit ideas and events to all corners of the globe, defining what is new or desirable, and they are adopted by young developing minds.

The result of this process is that it is now possible to provide a self-portrait of the universal adolescent. Teenagers who have the most in common with their peers describe themselves as being happy most of the time. They enjoy life, perceive themselves as able to exercise self-control, are caring, and are oriented toward others. They care about how others might be affected by their actions, prefer not to be alone, derive a good feeling from being with others, and like to help a friend whenever they can. They feel there is plenty they can learn from others. They value work and school. They enjoy doing a job well, think about the kind of work that they will do in the future, and would rather work than be supported.

Sexually, they feel confident about their body image and hold age-appropriate sexual attitudes. They do not feel far behind their peers, are not afraid to think or talk about sex, and do not feel they are boring to the opposite sex.

In the family they have positive feelings toward their parents. They feel that both parents are basically good and will not be disappointed or ashamed of them in the future. They do not carry a grudge against their parents and feel that their parents are usually patient and satisfied with them most of the time.

They cope well with life’s vicissitudes, are able to make decisions, feel talented, like to put things in order and make sense of them, do not give up after their first failure, try to prepare in advance for new situations, and feel that they will be able to assume responsibilities for themselves in the future.

This profile of the core adolescent contrasts with popular conceptions of adolescence as a time of alienation from one’s parents and as a time of selfcenteredness and directionlessness. Instead, adolescents do generally accept their parents’ attitudes and values, respecting them as well as their own responsibilities. Importantly, aspects of their common experience that teenagers most agree on are values, goals, and relationships.

B. The Well-Adjusted Adolescent

Teenagers are fundamentally family oriented. To one degree or another, they change their relationships with their families of origin, both physically and psychologically, as they increasingly become more invested in peer relationships. This does not necessarily mean rebelling from or becoming antagonistic toward their immediate family. Contrary to previous thought, an adolescent is able to become more independent from his or her family of origin without bitterness or disavowal. Cognitively and psychologically, adolescents are able to express both love and respect for their parents and affirm good feelings toward their peers at the same time. In fact, new friends do serve to facilitate the needed separation from their parents and also aid in the subsequent identity formation within the larger context of the social network they are moving into.

Sources for the core adolescent experience are the biological, cognitive, and psychosocial changes that occur during these years. Biological development is universal, offering clear characteristics that distinguish childhood from adolescence, but variation in timing requiring different types and degrees of personal adjustment to these changes. Similarly, cognitive development offers the universal of formal operational thinking, but there is considerable individual difference as to when this is achieved and to what end.

Psychosocial development is also similar for all adolescents. The universal tasks are to form a clear coherent view of self, to separate from one’s family of origin, to relate well to others of a like age, to prepare to form a conjugal family of one’s own, and to develop a viable social, as well as personal, identity that will synthesize personal characteristics with an acceptable social role. There is also a great deal of individual variation in accomplishing these tasks, but the added difficulty for the adolescent lies in the lack of clearly defined social recognition of the status of adulthood and when this is finally achieved. The well-adjusted adolescent will be the one who accomplishes and understands these developmental changes and who also has the help of parents who offer support when it is needed, but allow the teenager enough independence to be challenged by these tasks.

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