SOCIETY AND THE ADOLESCENT SELF-IMAGE

The plight of the teenager has the same poignancy for our era as the problems of labor had for the '30's. Everywhere one turns the adolescent, like the skeleton at medical school, is being explored, rattled, yanked at, or in rather grim fashion, fawned over. This produces interesting changes and for the first time in history, perhaps, adolescence has become a bore. Besides the nauseous think-pieces (Are Jack and Jill spending too much time on the phone? ) which float monthly through the mass magazines, the academy also sends out its flotillas, equipped with interpersonal radar, indices, statistics, bottomless footnotes, and if lucky, the following: ""This book, in manuscript, was co-winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Socio-Psychological Prize for 1963."" So Professor Rosenberg's study is a prize-winner; it certainly asks prize questions: Do teenagers have self-esteem? Do they feel useless? How are they affected by the Family, School, Community? What of psychosomatic symptoms and religious differences? (""While only boys thus have higher self-esteem than other boys and girls, it may be noted that it is only the Jewish boys who have conspicuously high self-esteem."") What of sex? (""While boys and girls are both highly concerned with being well- liked by others, girls more consistently give this value top priority...Boys...stress motoric values and physical courage...interpersonal control or dominance."") A prolonged, devoted ""survey of over 5000 adolescents,"" portentously full of information and no insights at all.