Round Table Discussion

Abstract

Chairman Kanner: Every day of man's life constitutes a transition between yesterday and tomorrow, converging in the intrinsic values of the moment. The past and present continue to shape and modify directions and goals, mostly through quiet evolution, sometimes in lively spurts. One of the liveliest spurts occurs during adolescence, at a time when a person is no longer a child and not yet an adult.

Many incisive changes take place in that period. Body growth, in a remarkable upward surge, attains its maximum for the individual. The physique assumes its characteristic configuration. Sexual development reaches procreative capacity. There is striving after emancipation from sheltered existence, a trend toward increasing self-dependence in thought and action. The sphere of interest and participation expands from the confines of home, neighborhood and school to the community at large. The choice of vocation, until then a playfully considered matter, becomes a real issue. Current standards and precepts are submitted to criticism not as yet leavened by the tests of experience. The established order is challenged boldly and then, after some struggle, appropriated gradually with more or less reservation.

Adolescence, in our culture, is a great translator. It translates the language of parental direction, attitudes and behavior into an individualized idiom. This is much less evident in primitive cultures. One might go so far as to say that in primitive societies there is no conceptual equivalent for that which we call adolescence. Childhood ceases abruptly when, through a set of elaborate rites, it is transported into full-fledged adulthood. Tribal ritualism, rather than personal spontaneity determines status and function. In our social structure, a child is given several years in which he is to find his way from a more or less manipulated and regimented existence to the acquisition of initiative in a loosely competitive environment in which the taboos are blurred, the semantics are equivocal, and the variety of occupational, political and theologic choices offers opportunities for perplexities. The adolescent translator's dictionary is full of confusing synonyms and antonyms.

A combination of inner soundness, wholesome parent-child relationship, and guidance from understanding adults, helps most adolescents to emerge safely from the groping and floundering which precede maturing stabilization.