This article is based on interviews with one thousand boys, fourteen to sixteen years of age, and two thousand girls, twelve to eighteen years of age. Dr. Adelson proposes revisions in the generally accepted views that consider adolescence as a time when conflict with the family leads to more independence and an acceptance of the peer group as the authority. The adolescent asks for and is freely given an unusual degree of freedom in the United States, but it is doubtful whether he wants a high degree of emotional autonomy or value autonomy. For many the peer group is merely used for learning social skills and not as an arena for confrontation of the self.

The author believes that the tensions of adolescence are displaced to and discharged within the matrix of peer group sociability. The defenses of repression, reaction-formation, and certain forms of ego restriction are used to curtail experience and limit growth. Both parents and children are made captive by the adolescent's