You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Adolescence, which means becoming an adult, is a phase in healthy growth. It covers the period of the individual's puberty. It also includes the socialization of the boy or girl. Here, the word socialization does not mean adaptation and conformity. When in health the individual becomes a mature adult, this implies that he or she is able to identify with parent-figures and with some aspect of society without too great a sacrifice of personal impulse, or alternatively, be essentially himself or herself without needing to be antisocial. In health the boy or girl becomes able to take responsibility, and to help to maintain, or modify, or even to alter completely the legacy of the last generation. Inevitably he and she will eventually, as adults, hand on a legacy to the next generation in the eternal series.
Adolescence, then, is a phase in the growth-process of every boy or girl. In our theoretical considerations and practical work we have to keep this in mind while we are dealing with that other thing: psychiatric illness in a boy or girl who happens to be in the age group of the adolescent or young adult.
Adolescence itself can be a stormy time. Defiance mixed with dependence, even at times extreme dependence, makes the picture of adolescence seem mad and muddled. Parents, who are much needed over this phase, find themselves confused as to their role. They may find themselves paying out dollars to enable their own children to flout them. Or they may find themselves being necessary as people to be wasted, while the adolescent goes for friendship and advice to aunts and uncles and even to strangers. Where the family is absent or ill some aspect