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Pubescence has long been recognized as a developmental milestone in the continuum of human maturity. Long before the development of a Western psychology of the mind, pubescence was a period marked by passage rites. For example, in Roman times, girls of 16 or 17 years married, and their young grooms had full adult status. Since the fourth century, the Jewish ritual of Bar Mitzvah heralded the onset of male puberty and preparedness for an adult masculine role. Similarly, pubescent girls assumed new respect and identity in the family constellation. Seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century writers clearly demonstrated how pubescence changed the function and role of the boy and girl in culture.
Psychological maturation was seen as concomitant with neurophysiological change. Society presumed and expected that adult behavior would commence when adult physical characteristics became apparent. In psychiatry, however, adolescence as a phase first took its place with the acceptance of August Aichorn's writings and his book “Wayward Youth.” Of course, Aichorn's emphases regarding pubescence were on the issues of psychopathology and treatment techniques.
Today, we have an opportunity to learn about developmental aspects of adolescence that one would consider normal and anticipate as integrative experiences. (The mastery of experiences becomes a lifelong project—not one especially designated to adolescence.)
As psychiatrists and psychoanalysts we tend to theorize that the evolution of either normative or psychopathologic behavior represents an outgrowth of intrapsychic and intrapersonal life. But culture and society also play a significant role in what is considered normative behavior, and psychiatrists cannot ignore how heavily our culture acts an an input to our own unconscious and conscious ideations and judgments relative to what normative behavior is.
In previously published materials, I have advanced the premise that frequently what is seen as normal or abnormal is dir