In recent times in the United States, the years between puberty and adulthood have come to be recognized as a distinct segment of the human life span quite apart from the preceding childhood and from the following adulthood years (Demos, 1969). The teenager is described as a boy or girl whose energies are sapped by the sheer process of physical growth (Remmers, 1957, p. 50). They are also caught up in a swirl of school work and school activities, confronted by decisions that will affect their entire life, confused by the shifting attitudes of parents, teachers, and society at large, and bewildered by the complex and rapidly changing society in which they must soon assume the responsibilities of maintaining, changing, or destroying the civilization of which they are a part. For all of this, they are and feel that they are partly still a child, almost an adult, but also an "adolescent."
There are grounds for looking at adolescence
as a unique period in the human life cycle, as evidence on sexual encounters of
adolescents will make clear. At least, that is a major assumption.1
The personality at biological puberty changes and assumes its own attitudes
toward gratification and denial as a result of previous learning experiences, parental
expectations, prohibitions, and by rewards reinforced by culture. What is known as
'character' has been formed in an adolescent, in many of its essentials, in the years of
childhood. The personality struggles to maintain its achievements in the face of new
impulses, wishes, and tensions calling for change. However, those observing the
adolescent may witness what appears to be the disillusion of any stability and quality
of character achieved in prior years.
This impression is mitigated by understanding
that any apparent turmoil ushers in an intense period of growth-that transition from
the relative dependence of childhood to the relative autonomy of adulthood.
The balance in personality that might be apparent in preadolescence is a
tentative balance in that it depends upon an alliance between the demands of the
child's conscience and upon parental authority; authority that the child sees as more
or less stable. This equilibrium is achieved in part through sacrifice of pleasurable
satisfaction of the sexual drive. Consequently, some upheaval at adolescence is
necessary and may indicate the emergence of an adolescent's own style of adjustment
to themselves, to others, and toward society.
In its absence, adolescents retain the
compliance, closeness to parents, and childhood values and judgments.
With the thrust of the biological drive during late preadolescence or early
1 See the preface for a statement on the theoretical framework, and for some
methodological considerations on which this book is based.
adolescence, the person experiences the impact of sexual intensity along with a
relatively mature biological capacity. The thrust of these feelings clash with the twelve-
to-thirteen year old's value judgments. These feelings may assault the idealized image
of self to which they aspire. These feelings sometimes lead to flight from sexual feelings
and from the persons whom the adolescent sees as causing the feelings and, therefore,
as being seductive.
This may result in backing off from all adults or even from all
sensuous gratification. Such a withdrawn adolescent feels intense loneliness, sadness,
or even grief at what amounts to the loss of parents or others that they love.
Adolescence is a period of intense involvement in the self. Sexual feelings may
cause discomfort in relation to other adolescents. If the adolescent withdraws from
encounters with others, masturbation may be the only means of sexual expression.
Depending upon previous experiences and an adolescent's particular adaptation,
masturbation may be accompanied by a variety of fantasies-infantile, uncertain,
romantic, hostile, or homosexual. Adolescent experimental fantasies may exist along
with a relatively adult imagining of coitus.
Furuly Floyd M. Martinson
Summer 1973