Review of a Book: Adolescence by Larry Jensen
In previous post I gave myself an assignment: to review what science has to say about my ideas.
I knew approximately what it would be about. As any person with “issues” on a quest to figure things out, I’ve been poking through scholarly articles, books, seeking elucidation of my inklings.
I’ve collected a few books that spoke to me. Some bought used on eBay, coughing up a $3–5.99-ish price tag on occasion. Some picked up on sidewalks. So, I wanted to write a review of these books.
But then I started overthinking this books review thing. Main detraction point: why bother? I am not an expert. Why write on my casual brushing up with modern theory of mind?
I finally convinced myself with the rationale involving me being one of the testing subjects for those theories. Scientists study more common, typical behaviors first, and then, as if cautiously, venture out exploring all other possibilities. We, carriers of those other possibilities, are living day to day with what scientists only tentatively theorize.
Thus, our going over their theories can be itself of interest. What books draw our attention? What passages we immediately zero in on (even while skimming through a book)? Do we master any commenting or critique?
With such a rationale, I finally felt sufficiently emboldened and uninhibited to go ahead and offer my 5 cents on the science books that picked my interest. Be it foolish of me or not, here it comes.
Book 1: Adolescence: Theories, Research, Applications by Larry Cyril Jensen.
West Publishing, 1985. ISBN: 0314852514.
This is a study book for a course on adolescence author teaches. Even in the introduction, something caught my eye. The “who usually takes this course” list contained not just who I would expect — students, needing this credit for their major. Author also named as course takers those who I would call “the miscellaneous”: social workers, parents, priests. Apparently, by author’s admission, this latter category turned out to be most eager for practical takeaways in addition to theories and research data. That struck me as such an unexpectedly caring and prudent thing those miscellaneous course takers would do. They would voluntarily take a course, such as on adolescence, because of their involvement with the youth. Can’t imagine any of the adults in my life during my youth even conceiving the notion of needing to take a course to better understand the adolescents in their care.
OK, so in one of the first chapters, the author compares various theories of adolescence. One particular theory is used as foundational for the book. That would be the concept of developmental tasks, by Robert Havighurst. Hmm, lets see: 1) Accepting one’s physique and using the body effectively. 2) Achieving new and more mature relationships with age-mates of both sexes. 3) Achieving masculinity and femininity. 4) Achieving emotional independence. 5) Preparing for an economic career. 6) Preparing for marriage and family life. 7) Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior. 8) Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guide to behavior — developing an ideology.
Upon listing these tenets by Havighurst, author calls this theory particularly useful, because it allows to identify areas in which adolescents excel or having problems with. Wow, no kidding!? Now I can’t help but wonder, if someone assessed me, would I even pass a single one of these?
Accepting my physique might be a candidate for a successfully mastered category. But no, I badly developed in this one too. I did get a vague sense that I might be “pretty”. But instead of giving me any confidence, that sense of being pretty made me want to freeze, because I expected to be a target of picking at me for being pretty. You know how sometimes a pretty girl walks down a street, and a group of gawking males start whistling, passing admiring remarks? That kind of attention is wrong not because of the harassment itself. Funny, those remarks, if examined each individually, may pass with flying colors as overall good natured (“hey, pretty”). The folly of such attention, as I realize now, is making the pretty girl feel ostracized, as if it’s her fault that she looks like a normal teenage girl belonging to human species. I for some reason developed halh-expectation of such skewed attention at me from any kind of well-meaning people, not just gawking males. And that made me unable to learn to command my body language in any genuine manner. I never learned to dress myself with any sense of style, or to accentuate something in my looks. Hence, failure at this particular developmental task. Should I go on?
I feel like remarking on task 8, before moving on. Developing ideology. Gees, crikey, I was so comprehensively screwed with this one. He-he, nervous chuckle, my youth coincided with the break down of that Soviet Union thing, in which I grew up. Not the most conducive setting for developing of ideology or moral standing, I would say. Sigh…
Along with this theory of developmental tasks by Robert Havighurst, other theories of adolescence are reviewed in the book as well. Notably, by G. Stanley Hall, Arnold Gesell, Allison Davis, James S. Coleman. Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud had much to say about adolescents. Margaret Mead, Petro Blos… Hah, that’s interesting: Ruth Benedict is listed as well (apparently, there was thoughts on youth within her study of native cultures).
So much attention, so many often contradicting theories, and each of us has only one brief period when all of it transpires.
Next chapter in the book is of note to me, because it is about the developing sense of identity during adolescence. Yet another scientist is named as the founding father of this particular field of study: Erik Erikson. He was alive and active at the time of this book’s publishing. There was also James Marcia (whose theories, funny thing, are called “Marcian”), who expanded on Erikson’s classification system for the sense of identity stages.
From the given examples I summarized to myself that the sense of identity that a youth is supposed to “seek” for themselves (a news to me in itself) revolves around various roles to be assumed later in life. Professional identity is one such role, plus all those roles associated with starting your own family, and who knows what else. And then the psychologists formulate how this process might go wrong. For instance, there might happen what they dubbed “identity role diffusion”, or “identity crisis”. The examples of that used in the book make you think of some catastrophic, out of the ordinary way how this might happen. Such as, imagine a boy, growing up knowing that he will inherit his father’s farm, and then boom, while the boy was still a youngster, the father decides to sell the farm. Oh-no, such a blow to the boy’s developing identity. Or a promising sports star, suddenly left out of that pursuit due to injury. I do empathize with people, experiencing such unfortunate life changing events. But with all due respect, that would be not so bad, if problems with developing identity would arise only from such rare catastrophic scenarios.
I caught myself skimming through this chapter on the sense of identity, looking for the part, in which the author would start discussing failure to seek any identity at all. Is it even a thing for the scientists? I found myself harboring thoughts in precisely this direction, while reading up on this chapter. Hey, dear scientists, how about a teenager who has no clue they even need to work on their identity? A teenager, just sailing through life, from one day to a next, dutifully doing the tasks at hand (study, homework, some chores), and that’s it. A teenager, who may be does read some books or watch some movies about societal roles of others, but fails to even grasp the concept, that now they need to do the effort to figure those roles for themselves?
I remember myself precisely like that. Reading or watching movies about people in society never triggered any process of figuring those roles for myself. I would just watch a movie and that’s it. Add to it the fact that comprehension was low. Nowadays, I progressed so much partly because I found ways to improve my comprehension of movies and books. Nowadays, if I watch a particular movie, I do it slowly, with closed captioning, several times over. That made my comprehension finally so much better, to the level of grasping the secondary meanings. In my youth, I had no such luck. Any movie would be presented to me just once, on tv or at a movie theater. I simply missed a lot at the time.
Also of note for this chapter, the interchanging way the scientists discuss either sense of identity or sense of self-esteem. This is something I put permanently “in the back of my mind” to ponder on, as I learn new things. Those are different concepts. One example was very illustrative.
Author discussed a case of two teenage boys (pp. 79–80).
One — a high accomplisher, but socially shy. Another, from a lesser fortunate but boisterous working class family, not very accomplished academically, but so much more self-assured, ready to enter any discussion. The author tentatively suggests that this difference in self-esteem had something to do with the boys different social engagements during their childhood. To me, this sounded on point, but too cautiously suggested. All these “may have something to do”, “there may be a link with”, “more study is needed to determine” adages as if help avoid stating the obvious: that good supportive social environment, caring, loving parents are keys for the person’s wholesome development.
This book I am reviewing is of course much more comprehensive then I give it credit for. Next chapters deal with peer relationships, the family, education, biological issues, dating and sex roles, morality and religion. Closing chapters deal with what could go wrong: clinical problems, delinquency.
It’s a good book, that haven’t lost it’s value, even being published in the 1980s. Overall impression I got was how much my “case” would be worse then any deviation even considered in this book. And I lived to tell the tale:)
I will be returning more to this book in the future. For now that’s all. Next post will be on Molecules of Emotion by Candace B. Pert, PhD.
