Adolescent Selves. Background. The Biological Self. The Cognitive Self

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?”

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.

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.

During these pubertal changes, more calories and vitamins are needed than at any other time in life. This is a highly critical time nutritionally, since 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 \2\ 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 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 variation 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.

The Cognitive Self. The intellectual maturation that takes place on an inner level for the adolescent is more subtle than are 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 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 selfconsciousness 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 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 consideration for females, while for males it is usually rights and rules. 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. Adolescent thinking is well beyond childhood thinking, due to its expansiveness. 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.

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 which gives the individual a sense of meaningfulness and self-continuity. Identity eventually includes establishing a sexual, political, moral, religious, and vocational identity which 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 selfimage 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 “timeout” 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.