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FACING THE EFFECTS WHICH different aspects of one's heritage have had on one's development is a necessary step in the process toward individuation and maturity. This process requires a person to deal with the totality of the life situation in which he grew up; not only his parents' socio-economic status, their ethnic cultural and religious background and their values, but also the parents' attitudes regarding themselves.
At first the influence of the parents is dominant, and psychoanalysis has, of course, explored this influence in many of its variations. The growth of the child is seen largely as a process of socialization and individuation. Thus the child is gradually prepared for assuming further responsibilities for himself as he enters the three- and four-year-old state, when, besides often helping younger children, he turns to explore the world and ask endless why's and what's. At the same time the seeming all-knowingness and all-powerfulness of the parents gradually begins to shrink.
One of the potentially richest periods of growth is adolescence. This is the time when the young man and woman should become able to deal consciously and deliberately with what has been presented to them as real and good. At this time, more than at any earlier time, young people should seek their won direction and orientation, choose a goal for their lives and a way to reach it. They should share their experience with others and seek, out, either among their contemporaries or among those whose achievements and values they admire and respect, those who will be their companions