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Abstract:
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This documents states that adolescent psychology is a field of study within the major branch of psychology- Developmental psychology which also constitutes Child and
Adult psychology. Any concise definition of adolescence falls short of a comprehensive description of the term because every definition reveals the bias or major interest of the author. Often a technical term is invented in order to create a social condition and a social fact and such has been true with respect to the term, ‘Adolescence’.
As defined by the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, adolescence
refers to the, ‘process of growing up’ or to the ‘period of life from puberty to
maturity’. Linguistically the concept is a Latin word meaning ‘to grow up’
or to ‘come to maturity.’ If we start at the beginning as it were and set out to
define the term adolescence from a psychological perspective, then
immediately two aspects become apparent.
- First – that adolescence as a period cannot even be defined in a way that makes it a period of development independent or immune of human judgment. In other words the question being whether adolescence as a phenomena is a Social construction.
- Second – that it usually has to be defined with the sort of ambiguity that has left the door open for rival theories of adolescence |