Adolescence: The terms drives from latin adolescere, meaning “to
grow up” random house dictionary defines adolescence as the process or
condition of growing up, the growing age of human beings; one period which
extends form childhood to manhood or womanhood. Sigmund
Freud identified adolescence as a period when psychosexual conflicts could
cause emotional upheaval, inconsistent behaviour and vulnerability to deviant
activity Freud related much of adolescent behaviour to genital development in
puberty which he said, induced a need among adolescents to become emotionally
independent of parents this need induced rebellion accompanied by anxiety
moodiness and aggressive behaviour. Concern over self-image, often influenced
by social interaction also complied one of challenges of adolescence.
Sigmund Freud claimed that our experiences as
infants are vital to the way in which one “ego” (basically who we appear to be)
develop according to Freud we are born as ‘id’ (das es’ or the ‘It’) which
represent the psyche at its most primitive concerned only with that which
allows us to survive and reproduce). The ‘ego’ (‘das ich’ or the I’) begins to
develop in the early stage of life. The ‘ego’ represents reality while the ‘id’
represents desires and it is the ego which come to think of as the ‘me’ that
people see and that we, as individuals, understand as we grow older and become
social beings, the super ego (das uber-ich’ or the ‘over’ – I) is constructed
from many sources that govern our sense of right and wrong.
Between the ages
of six years until puberty a period of latency occurs where sexual feelings he
dormant. The arrival of the puberty corresponds with the “Genital stage” the
period of adult sexuality.
According to
Anna Freud the turmoil of adolescence is the result of the ego attempting to
regain control over the instinctual drives of the id and the resurgence of such
destructive drives can lead to behavior that is anti social and even criminal.
Adolescence represents a time when the turmoil of the Oedipus complex resurfaces
only this time it is combined with potential explosive nature of sexual of
sexual maturity. The Oedipus complex, as it occurs during the phallic stage, is
centered around the child desire to posses his mother and do away with the one
person preventing him to do so namely his father. In Greek mythology, Oedipus
unwittingly, kill his father Laius king of Thebes and marries his own mother
Jocasta on discovering what he has done Oedipus is overcome with guilt and
deliberately puts out his own eyes. (Freud certainly had a flair for the
dramatic) indeed Anna Freud believed that those adolescents who did not show
such signs of storm and stress must be pathological, stating that “To be normal
during the adolescent period is by itself abnormal and claimed that the normal
adolescent who showed no signs for storm and stress must be repressing it and
therefore had built up such strong defences against such drives that they are
now crippled by the result.
Freudian theory would suggest that problems in
adolescence are universal, that is they are experienced by all adolescents in
all cultures as other have found this is certainly far from the case.