THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGES

Posted on March 11th, 2009, by admin

The considerable physical changes which occur during adolescence are paralleled by marked psychological changes as the child matures to become an adult. Psychologists have determined that the adolescent years are a time when learning capacity and efficiency are at their peak and reasoning is easier. At some point during this period the child, for the first time, begins to be able to make decisions, to choose with discrimination, and to become aware of what is possible and what is fantasy.

Above all, as far as the psychological development of the child is concerned, adolescence is a period of adjustment, during which he is searching for an independent identity, so that he can answer the question ‘Who am I?’ He knows the direction in which he wants to go, but he is unsure where he wants to go and how he is going to get there. Because of this need to see himself as a distinct individual -not as an extension of his parents – he questions authority, and may rebel against parental decisions.

It is not entirely clear how an adolescent finds an identity in which he is comfortable, but the evidence is that it is a slow, continuous process, not a sudden, spectacular vision. A person’s unique identity begins to be formed from childhood identifications with his parents or other ‘significant’ individuals. These identifications leave memory traces, and, as the child grows older, they are added to, modified, changed selectively, perhaps several times, in the light of new experiences, until at last an identity is formed which the adolescent finds comfortable for himself.

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