Effects of Subculture in Childhood and Adolescence

Effects of Subculture in Childhood and Adolescence

Effects of Subculture in Childhood and Adolescence

Each question needs to be answered in 100 words

1. Freud, Piaget, and others viewed life as a series of stages. In contrast, Fromm and Rogers saw it as a process. How could these differing viewpoints affect perceptions of personality?

2. Early psychologists were medical doctors or scientists. By the middle part of the twentieth century, philosophers and theologians added their ideas to the study of personality. How would a viewpoint that encompasses these elements affect perceptions about personality?

3. Identification with a subculture in childhood and adolescence may help individuals become well-adjusted later. Using Sullivan’s idea of “chumship,” what does this help us understand about personality?

Effects of Subculture in Childhood and Adolescence

Louis sat on the grassy hillside overlooking the high school, waiting for his best friend, Darryl, to arrive from his fourth-period class. The two boys often had lunch together. Watching as hundreds of students poured onto the school grounds, Louis reflected on what he had learned in government class that day. “suppose I had been born in the People’s Republic of China. I’d be sitting here, speaking a different language, being called by a different name, and thinking about the world in different ways. Wow,”Louis pondered. “I am who I am through some quirk of fate.”

Louis awoke from his thoughts with a start to see Darryl standing in front of him. “Hey, dreamer! I’ve been shouting and waving from the bottom of the hill for five minutes. How come you’re so spaced out lately, Louis?”

“Oh, just wondering about stuff—what I want, what I believe in. My older brother Jules—I envy him. He seems to know more about where he’s going. I’m up in the air about it. You ever feel that way?”

“Yeah, a lot,”Darryl admitted, looking at Louis seriously. “I wonder, what am I really like? Who will I become?”

Louis and Darryl’s introspective remarks are signs of a major reorganization of the self at adolescence: the development of identity. Both young people are attempting to formulate who they are—their personal values and the directions they will pursue in life.

We begin this chapter with Erikson’s account of identity development and the research it has stimulated on teenagers’ thoughts and feelings about themselves. The quest for identity extends to many aspects of development. We will see how a sense of cultural belonging, moral understanding, and masculine and feminine self-images are refined during adolescence. And as parent–child relationships are revised and young people become increasingly independent of the family, friendships and peer networks become crucial contexts for bridging the gap between childhood and adulthood. Our chapter concludes with a discussion of several serious adjustment problems of adolescence: depression, suicide, and delinquency.