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This book is one of a series on Psychoanalysis and Culture; it focuses on the interrelationship between culture and adolescent development. Esman, an experienced analyst of adolescents, reviews the history of concepts about adolescents' place in society and presents his view that the adolescent acts as a shaper and barometer of culture. In developing his thesis, he disagrees with the concept of a "generation gap" between adolescent and adult society. He contends that the adolescent reflects what is occurring in society. He believes that currently held concepts such as "moratorium," idealism, and Sturm und Drang, are not not necessarily observed in all adolescents.
In his chapter, "Culture as Shaper of Adolescence," he states that social scientists view the phenomenology of adolescence as in large measure culturally determined. However, by placing emphasis on the effects of industrialization and consumerism on current adolescent behavior and customs, he seems to simplify the society in which we live. Anorexia nervosa is cited as a dramatic demonstration of the impact of culture and cultural change on adolescents of many social and class backgrounds. While cultural ideals influence body configuration, it is questionable how ubiquitous anorexia is, because large segments of our culture are indifferent to the ideal of a thin person—not to mention those suffering from hunger and starvation.
In the chapter, "The New Sexuality," clinical examples demonstrate how his patients dealt with their psychic conflicts as distinct from current social sexual patterns. He contends that the so-called sexual revolution seems to be a change of cultural patterns with which most adolescents are comfortable and that only the most vulnerable adolescents require "the ultimate redress of personality disintegration and ego regression" (p. 78) in coping with the new sexuality. In like manner, he addresses the problems of AIDS and adolescent pregnancy as having little or marginal effect on