Adolescent Development

Abstract

What is an adolescent- in terms of physical and psychological development? In primitive communities, the definition is relatively easy, because the ‘stage’ of adolescence as we know it is virtually non-existent; there is only pre-puberty, puberty and adulthood, with the rubicon form one to the other being passed as soon as either-male or female-reaches the physically mature stage of being able to procreate. In the developed society it is all, however, prolonged by the demands of education, and is characterised by a stage where the individual is neither a child nor an adult and is recognised as neither by all the other members of society who are older or younger. The stage is given a name, based often in the past on the mode of dress adopted by those who are in this somewhat unfortunate group-the ‘flappers’, ‘bobby-soxers’, ‘teen-agers’, ‘teddy boys’, ‘mods’ or ‘rockers’, ‘hippies’-and there are perhaps subtle connotations of disrespect in most of these terms that are used by the mass-media of communication for the sake of brevity.