Analysis Of The Teen Identity Crisis

1.9—The Teen Identity Crisis of Both Power and Love The stable identity and closeness with parents of these first 8 years of school becomes unstable during the teen period with major growth spurts and hormonal changes. Teens become less close to parents through some form of separation or independence from parental guidance replaced by the influence of peers and the media. Teens are intensely attracted to the opposite gender for intimacy needs but nothing but physical intimacy is possible without a stable identity and closeness. Without the needed boundaries, closeness becomes the anxious“fusion” of two people who don’t know their identities. The big question is “who am I?” The “individuation” process of separating from parental values

Teens are often embarrassed of their parents before their peer groups because parents seem old fashioned, retro, not cool, and they would prefer to be driving, eating and entertaining with friends rather than their parents who own the car and pay their

I felt like I had faced an identity cross roads, went into a crisis of loss and confusion and came out the other side with an integration. I had tried to be a liberal agnostic but lost my faith in this disbelief to reclaim my original values orientation despite the liberalism of my college. To my surprise, friends valued my new honesty and sincere seeking for a truth that went against conformity.

Although leaving home for college is a big step toward autonomy, college students are still in the “betwixt and between” of teen agers where they are more “preparing for work” than filling the adult career slot. Students work part-time jobs, get money from their parents as well as loans and/or scholarships but are not self-sufficient and are often poor like the characters in the Opera La Boheme who do art, poetry and philosophy but can hardly pay the