THE MYTH ABOUT TEEN-AGERS
By Richard Flaste; Richard Flaste is Science and Health Editor of The New York Times.
Published: October 9, 1988
A FATHER I KNOW TELLS of one unsettling moment when he was sure he would never understand the teen-age mind. The mind in question was that of his own teen-ager, a 15-year-old blonde possessed of considerable charm and an aggressive reticence. The pivotal moment was this effort at conversation:
''So, how was your day at school?'' ''Good.'' ''Was it more than just good? I mean, did anything actually happen that was interesting?'' ''No, it was just good.'' ''What about the bio test? Didn't you have a test?'' (The answer this time came with a gleam of irritation in her eyes.) ''I told you, everything was good.''
He backed away, feeling foolish, sorry he had tried, sorry he'd stirred her pique. What could possibly be going on in her mind? And he wondered about himself, too, as he slipped away into a friendlier room. Was he actually afraid of her? Later, having thought about that scene many times, he concluded that he had in fact been frightened, but not so much of her - after all, they had their good times, and she did seem to love and respect him at least every now and then. Rather it was the condition of adolescence that scared him. On occasions like that abortive effort at conversation he wasn't just confronting a teen-ager who might or might not be in the mood to talk to him but also everything he had ever heard about adolescence, the Sturm, the Drang and the plain old orneriness of it. That flash of annoyance in her eyes was all that was necessary to evoke an image of those infamous raging hormones boiling inside a pubescent caldron.
The burden was a heavy one to take into a small inquiry about a person's day. It was an unnecessary burden, too. For, although most of us aren't aware of it, the concept of adolescence as a period of angry, dard turmoil has largely been overthrown, and along with it the idea that kids need to be tormented and perverse to make the storm-tossed transition to adulthood. That concept is being replaced by a new psychology of adolescence, a growing body of work that reflects a vigorous attempt to find out what life is genuinely like for normal teen-agers, and which reveals that delight plays as large a role among most adolescents as misery does.
A substantial number of psychotherapists and personality theorists still believe that adolescence is a trial by fire, as do many writers of juvenile fiction. But what is now the mainstream of psychological research dismisses this emphasis on turmoil as balderdash. It is a misguided emphasis, many researchers say, which grew out of the overwrought imaginations of romanticists ranging from the Freuds (mostly Anna) to Goethe (particularly, ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'').
In the 1970's, I wrote regularly about child-development issues for this newspaper, and I accepted the idea that any teen-ager was necessarily a little mad. To a large extent this notion was promoted by the psychoanalytic literature, but it was embraced by many of us as a handy way to explain hard times with our teen-agers. We could say that noxious behavior such as naked aggression was normal, and so we didn't have to worry. We reassured ourselves constantly, usually with a knowing laugh about the craziness of teen-agers. But I did not believe it completely. Why should only this age group carry the label of madness? Coming back to the question now, I am struck by how different the mood among many psychologists and psychiatrists is. By and large, they are more determined to draw an empirical and detailed picture of the varied and complex adolescent experience.
Some researchers have surveyed thousands of teen-agers to learn what they believe about themselves and their families. Others have given youngsters beepers to carry around, so that when they are signaled they will report their moods at that moment. And still others have worked with families, asking parents, teen-agers and their siblings to take batteries of tests.
AMONG THE most influential of this cadre of researchers is Dr. Daniel Offer of the University of Chicago, a psychiatrist who believes that the widespread idea that the teen years are unavoidably insane has mischaracterized the lives of millions of people. Moreover, he contends that the emphasis on turmoil has created the expectation of Sturm and Drang for every teen-ager, thereby masking the serious emotional difficulties of a significant minority of adolescents who need professional help. Dr. Offer was moved to declare a ''Defense of Adolescents'' in The Journal of the American Medical Association, and he made a presentation along the same lines to the convention of the American Psychiatric Association last May.
Dr. Offer's team was among the earliest to plumb the day-to-day feelings of large numbers of teen-agers. Their first explorations, in the 1960's, began to reveal that, incredible as it might have seemed, most teen-agers were happy most of the time. After years of confirmatory work, he confidently told the psychiatrists' convention that ''the vast majority of adolescents are well-adjusted, get along well with their peers and their parents, adjust well to the mores and values of their social environment and cope well with their internal and external worlds.'' Dr. Offer recalled in a recent interview that this message disturbed some of his colleagues, because they didn't believe that teen-agers' responses to questions could be trusted.