Adolescence

Traditional views of adolescence

Erikson

Coleman’s Focal Theory

Group Exercise.

• look at the material from teenage problem pages etc, and identify what you consider to be the issues facing adolescents these days

Some of the changes in adolescence

Classical View of Adolescence

• Storm and Stress –G Stanley hall wrote about Adolescence in 1904 saying

• “every step of the upward way is strewn with the wreckage of the body, mind and morals”

• There is evidence for example that adolescents mood does swing further and more quickly than adults.

• Identity Crisis – a this is the key issue for Erikson• Generation gap – although we might thinks of this as a

fairly recent phenomenon. Plato wrote about these issues 2000 years ago.

• ERIK H. ERIKSON: A LIFE'S WORK

Erikson’s Stages

Table 1O.1 Erik Erikson's eight psychosocial stages of developm ent

S ta g e

P ersona l and soc ia l re la tionsh ips

C ris is o r con flic t

P oss ib le o u tco m e

Birth to 1 year

M o th e r

Trust vs. mistrust

Trus t and fa ith in o the rs o r a m is trus t o f peop le .

2 yea rs

P arents

A utonom y vs . sham e and doub t

Self-control and mastery or self-doubt and fea rfu lness .

3 to 5 years

F am ily

In itia tive vs. gu ilt

Purpose and d irection or a loss of se lf-esteem .

6 to 1 1 years

N eig hb o urho od a nd school

Industry vs. in fe rio rity

C om petence in soc ia l and in te llectual pursuits or a fa ilu re to th rive a n d d e ve lo p .

A dolescence

P eer g roups and ou tg roups ; m ode ls o f leadership

Iden tity vs . ro le confusion

A sense of 'who one is' or prolonged un ce rta in ty a b o u t o n e 's ro le in life .

Early a d u lth o od

Partners in friendship, se x, com pe tition , co o p era tio n

Intimacy vs. isolation

Formation of deep personal relationships or the fa ilu re to lo ve o th e rs .

Middle age

D iv ided labour and shared household

G enera tivity vs . s ta gn a tio n

E xpansion of in te res ts and caring fo r others o r a tu rn in g in w a rd to w a rd o n e 's o w n p ro b le m s . O ld age

'M ank ind ', 'M y k ind '

In teg rity vs . despa ir

S atis fac tion w ith the triu m p hs an d d isappo in tm ents o f life or a sense o f un fu lfilm e n t a n d a fea r o f d ea th .

Erikson’s Life

• Birth • Erik Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 15,

1902. Erik Erikson dies in Harwich, Massachusetts, 1994.

• Childhood • Erikson's biological father, who was Danish, had left

before Erikson was born. He was adopted by his Jewish stepfather, and took the name Erik Homberger. But because of his blond-and-blue-eyed Nordic look, Erikson was rejected by his Jewish neighbours. At grammar school, on the other hand, he was teased for being Jewish. Feeling not fitting in with either culture, Erikson's identity crises began at an early age.

Erikson’s Life

• Other Life Events

• Around 1920, instead of going to college (for disliking the formal education structure), Erikson travelled around Europe, keeping a diary of his experiences.

• Came to the U.S. in 1933 and became Boston's first child analyst.

• Career• He was an artist and a teacher in the late 1920's

when he met Anna Freud, and began to study child psychoanalyses from her and at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. He immigrated to the United States in 1933. He obtained a position at the Harvard Medical School, and later on, held positions at institutions including Yale, Berkeley, the Menninger Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Palo Alto, and the Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.

Society’s View of Adolescence

• Western societies, at least, see adolescence as a moratorium, an authorised delay of adulthood, which frees adolescents from most responsibilities and tries to help them make the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood.

• Although this can be helpful, it can also be extremely unhelpful. Thus, although adolescents may still be dependent on adults, they are expected to behave like adults in an independent and adult way.

3 Questions of Adolescence

• 'When do I become an adult?' elicits a response from a teacher, which is different to that from a doctor, parent or police officer.

• As well as having to deal with the question 'Who am I?',

• the adolescent must also deal with the question 'Who will I be?'

Key Task of Adolescence

• Erikson saw the creation of an adult personality as being accomplished mainly through choosing and developing a commitment to an occupa tion or role in life.

Benefits of Identity

• The development of ego identity, that is, a firm sense of who one is and what one stands for, is positive (or adaptive) and can carry people through difficult times and colour their achievements.

Identity Crisis

• When working with psychiatrically disturbed soldiers in World War II, Erikson coined the term identity crisis to describe the loss of personal identity which the stress of combat seemed to have caused.

• Some years later, he extended the use of what is now a familiar term to include 'severely conflicted young people whose sense of confu sion is due ... to a war within themselves'.

Role Confusion

• The identity confusion, or failure to integrate perceptions of the self into a coherent whole, results in role confusion.

• Sometimes it is shown in an aimless drifting through a series of social and occupational roles.

• However, the consequences can be more severe, leading the adolescent into abnormal or delinquent behaviour (such as drug taking and even suicide).

Negative Identity

• Erikson terms this type of role confusion negative identity,

• the choice of adolescents who, because they cannot resolve their identity crisis, adopt an extreme position that sets them aside from the crowd.

• For those with negative identity, the extreme position they adopt is preferable to the loneliness and isolation that come with the failure to achieve a distinct and more functional role in life.

3 Other Forms of Role Confusion

• Intimacy: This is a fear of commitment to, or involvement in, close relationships which arises out of a fear of losing one's own identity. The result of this may be stereotyped and formalised relationships or isolation.

• Time perspective: This is the inability to plan for the future or retain any sense of time. It is associated with anxieties about change and becoming an adult.

• Industry: This is a difficulty in channelling resources in a realistic way in work or study, both of which require commitment. As a defence, the adolescent may find it impossible to concentrate or become frenetically engaged in a single activity to the exclusion of all others.

Does Research back this up?

• However, in general, the evidence suggests that there is no increase in the disturbance of the self-image during early adolescence (e.g. Offer et al., 1988).

• For Coleman and Hendry (1990), such disturbance is more likely in early than late adolescence (especially around puberty),

• but only a very small proportion of the total adolescent population is likely to have a negative self-image or very low self-esteem.

Criticisms

• Criticisms• Erikson's theory has also been criticised on the grounds

that it is based on observations of a restricted group of people (largely middle-class, white males).

• Gilligan (1982) a Feminist has argued that Erikson's theory must be seen in that context. She sees it as being applicable only to males. Whilst it might be true that male adolescents want to forge a separate identity,

• Gilligan argues that females are more interested in developing warm and nurturing relation ships and less interested in the idea of separateness.

• For Gilligan, Erikson is guilty of advocating universal stages in the absence of supportive data.

A Sociological View

Some sociologists see socialisation as being more dependent on the adolescent's own generation than the family or other institutions. Marsland (1987) called this auto socialisation

‘ The crucial meaning of youth is withdrawal from adult control and influence compared with child hood. Peer groups are the milieu into which young people withdraw ... this withdrawal ... is, within limits, legitimated by the adult world.'

The Generation Gap

• . In the National Children's Bureau study, for example, parents were given a list of issues on which it is commonly believed that they and their adolescent children disagree.

• parents saw their relationships with their adolescent children as being harmonious

• a view which was confirmed by their children.

NCB Study

NCB Study

Coleman’s Focal Theory

Focal theory

• a theory of normality rather than abnormality.

• The transition requires substantial adjustments of both a psychological and social nature.

• for the majority it appears to be a period of relative stability and one which most young people cope with without undue stress.

Focal theory

• Coleman argues that particular sorts of relationship patterns come into focus (or are most prominent) at different ages.

• However, no pattern is specific to one age. The patterns overlap and there are wide individual differences with respect to them

Ages at which the different issues are in focus

Focal theory

• adolescents spread the process of adaptation over a span of years,

• attempting first to resolve one issue before addressing the next.

• Because different problems and relationships come into focus and are dealt with at different stages,

• the stresses resulting from the need to adapt are rarely concentrated so that all must be dealt with at once.

• Adolescents who, for whatever reason, must deal with more than one problem at a time are those in whom problems are most likely to occur (Coleman and Hendry, 1990).

Conclusions of Research

• that those who adjust less well during adolescence would be more likely to be those facing more than one interpersonal issue at a time. Their results strongly supported the proposal.

• if change occurred at too young an age, causing the individual to be 'off-time' in development, or was marked by sharp discontinuity, or involved an accumulation of significant and temporally close changes, adjustment was much poorer.

Example

• Think of the number of changes that accommodated children may face in comparison to those living at home with parents.

• The theory would predict difficulties in adjustment

Traditional view of Adolescence

• Storm and Stress

• Identity Crisis

• Generation gap

The Media

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6100000/newsid_6108300/6108324.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&nol_storyid=6108324&bbcws=1

Conclusion

• Traditional view is not correct

• Adolescence is typified by normality rather than abnormality

• Adolescents can cope with one set of changes at a time