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The Adolescent Passage: Developmental Issues is a collection of papers presented by Dr. Blos over the past 34 years. As in any collection reflecting so great a span of time, there is some unevenness in the immediacy of the topics presented and in the issues raised. The “Generation Gap” and the concept of the “counterculture” are less timely now than they were at the time of the presentation of “The Generation Gap: Fact or Fiction” in 1969. Yet, these papers are enduring because of their consistent attempt to view adolescence as a dynamic process in which the adolescent is presented with both challenge and the opportunity for restorative change and reintegration.
“The Second Individuation Process of Adolescence” must be singled out as a paper in which Dr. Blos demonstrates his interweaving of clinical example and psychodynamic theory into a relevant and insightful whole. While respecting the adolescent's need for regression in the service of further growth, he preserves the adult as a necessary ego ideal. Adolescent sturm und drang is viewed as a necessary period of transition in which “the group permits identification as role tryouts without demanding any permanent commitments. It also allows for interactional experimentation as a severance action from childhood dependencies, rather than as a prelude to any new and lasting, personal and intimate relationship …. Whenever peer relationship simply replaces childhood dependencies, then the group has miscarried its function. In such cases, the adolescent process has been short-circuited with the result that unresolved emotional dependencies become permanent personality attributes” (p. 160).
Unlike the strange prophets abroad in the land, Dr. Blos reemphasizes that adolescence is a period of transition and not an end stage in itself. His cautions about the destructive and growth-limiting potentials for groups that adolescents approach in their need for support while separating from their parents seem particularly relevant