Adolescence as a Developmental Stage

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.

Historical Background.Unfortunately, there has not been as clear a beginning and ending to adolescence since the loss of the socially prescribed rite of passage. The biological events that signal the beginnings of the transformation of the child into adult have always been in place, but the social and economic factors that interact with these have been constantly changing.

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 between childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. This also caused confusion between the terms “puer,” “juvenile,” “adolescent,” “teenager,” and “youth.” Only “adolescent” implies change and process, while the others refer to status or product.

In 1904 G. 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 was thought that both disturbed and normal adolescents experienced this turmoil, or significant emotional oscillation between the extremes of psychological functioning. This disruption in equilibrium led to mood fluctuations, thought confusion, and changeable and unpredictable behavior, such as feeling happy and altruistic one day and hopeless and depressed the next. Hall saw adolescence as the last of four stages of development—the final transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, and the one requiring open rebellion against the established values in order to separate from the parents and become independent. Anna Freud also expanded on this theme, drawing from her own psychoanalytic analysis of disturbed children, and generalized the phenomenon of turmoil to all adolescents.

A New Perspective on Adolescence.The idea of normal adolescent turmoil has made the distinction between serious psychopathology and mild crisis among adolescents difficult to determine. However, new empirical studies have found that adolescents are no more intrinsically disturbed than are adults or children. Surveys of over 25,000 normal adolescent students taking the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire have resulted in findings that confirm that the percentage of disturbance among adolescents is similar to that found among adults.

Consistently, 20% of the adolescents—clearly a minority— reported disturbing feelings of loneliness, emptiness, or confusion. These adolescents, however, are far outnumbered by the 80% who do cope well with the teenage years and make a relatively smooth transition to adulthood. There was no evidence of extreme mood swings, unpredictability of behavior, or deep-rooted social pessimism. The 80% adjusting well to the adolescent transformation represent the norm who are generally relaxed under everyday circumstances, can control their day-today trials, and have confidence in their ability to deal with stress.

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.