Cultural Interferences with Listening to Adolescents

On the site of the biblical city of Ur, a four-thousand-year-old tablet was discovered with the following inscription carved on it: “Our civilization is doomed if the unheard-of actions of our younger generations are allowed to continue” (Lauer 1973, p. 176). Some historians, however, claim that adolescence is a modern invention (Aries 1965), a postindustrial phenomenon. There is controversy about this view but we can all agree that the scientific study of adolescence started in the twentieth century, with two salient works, G. Stanley Hall's (1904) monumental two volumes on adolescence (which he called the “Ephebic transformation”) and Sigmund Freud's “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” , one section of which is devoted to the transformations of puberty.

The fundamental outline of the psychoanalytic view of adolescent development is contained in Freud's essay: the increase of sexual drive intensity at puberty breaks down latency defenses, including the incest barrier. The major task of adolescence is the relinquishment of infantile relationships and desires, the overthrow of parental authority, and the establishment of nonincestuous sexual relationships and a mature set of ideas, values, and morals. These momentous transformations take place initially and mainly in fantasies and often under the impetus of masturbation. During puberty, infantile sexual impulses become fore-pleasures under the dominance of the genital urge for heterosexual intercourse and procreation. Interferences with genital aims can lead to perversions.

This is the basic psychoanalytic model of adolescent development; the contributions of later writers add important details but do not alter much. Ernest Jones (1922) borrowed the theory of recapitulation of early phases from G. S. Hall (1904) to extend Freud's idea of the revival of oedipal wishes at puberty. However, Jones's view is more far-reaching, as he claims that