Psychoanalysis.  2020 Oct;31(4):63-69. 10.18529/psychoanal.2020.31.4.63.

Adolescence: The Developmental Theories from Granville Stanley Hall to Emerging Adulthood

• Bahn GH

• KMID: 2507773
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.18529/psychoanal.2020.31.4.63

Abstract

Adolescence is known as the transition stage between childhood and adulthood. Stanley Hall described the emotional turmoil during adolescence as ‘storm and stress’ with the biological changes of puberty. Establishing identity and achieving secondary separation and individuation are the main development tasks. The innovative development in the field of biology has enabled us to explain the imbalance between adolescents’ emotion and thinking ability due to the difference in the speed of development of the brain in adolescence, rapid changes in the limbic circuitry, and relative slow progress of the prefrontal lobe circuit. The tremendous changes in social culture have changed the definition of the developmental stages and the developmental goals in ado-lescence. Teenagers in the 21st century prefer living in cyberspace to the real world, and digital communication is more convenient than speaking in language. While the theory of sexual development that Sigmund Freud was concerned about was based on sex as the unitary sense, people perceive sex and gender separately and can change biological sex through surgery according to the gender they prefer. The diversity of gender identity emerged as a new adolescent development task. The classical psychoanalytic development theory is linear, and stage-based. The socio-demographic changes cause responsibility as an adult to be delayed in the late 20s. As a result of the complex interaction studies of the brain, body and environment, a new developmental stage, and emerging adulthood, are being highlighted.

Keyword

Adolescence; Emerging adulthood; Development; Gender; Cyberspace