You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MALE ADOLESCENCE, DESPITE ALL THE progress that has been made in its investigation, remains a puzzle. One youngster enters adolescence most promisingly, alert and spontaneous in his originality, but leaves it with constraints and inhibitions and lacking in interests. Yet in another youngster just the reverse takes place. I do not know of any explanation of this seeming paradox.
In speaking of creativity, I am not thinking of the sense in which every human being is creative. Perception per se, after all, can be regarded as a creative act. Here I speak of creativity in the narrower sense, the ability to give existence to unusual, original values. In this respect our species shows remarkable contrasts. The lives of some individuals are rich with creation of original values, and creativity can be said to be their existential center. The lives of others, however, are totally bare of this kind of creativity. I shall not contribute to a clarification of this problem. Indeed, the main inference I shall have to draw will be trivial, but the path I shall take to reach it may offer something of interest.
The problem of male adolescence and creativity has two aspects: hypercreative adolescence per se, and the adolescence