Types of Adolescence

A comprehensive psychoanalytic theory of adolescence has not yet been worked out. The fragments which have been published by several authors are to a certain degree inconsistent with each other, but they coincide in points of sufficient importance to warrant an attempt at piecing them into a theory. Briefly and roughly it may be sketched as follows.

After years of conflict between the instincts and the external and internal powers which enforce renunciations, the child reaches the equilibrium well known to us as the latency period. This relatively stable structure of mind and of behavior pattern is soon submitted to the test. Puberty appears. We do not know exactly either its eliciting factors or all the details of the far-reaching bodily changes which it involves. In psychoanalytic terms, puberty consists of a considerable increase of libido arising suddenly. The structure of course is not fitted to bear that burden. To adjust it to the new situation becomes of most urgent concern, and it is managed by the complex changes of mind and behavior which we call adolescence. Thus, adolescence is the adjustment of the child's personality to puberty, or at least an attempt at one. The task of bringing things into a new equilibrium can be accomplished by many and very different means. Each libidinal urge can be satisfied or repressed or be overcome by the various defense mechanisms of which only a small number has been described and named by psychoanalysts to date. Since there are scores of different ways of adaptation, there must exist more than a few types of adolescence. The selection of a definite mode of adaptation is, as we know, determined by the past life history of the individual. Thus we may expect to gain knowledge of the conditions which foster or prevent the development of these types.

Our simple but nice formula is too poor to pass even as a nucleus of a scientific theory. Nevertheless it conforms to the