Adolescents: A Suppressed Minority Group.

This article focuses on the psychological aspects of adolescence and presents a comparison of the characteristics of the adolescent peer group to those of a suppressed minority group which reveals some striking similarities in relation to antagonism. One possible way of analyzing the adolescent is to consider him a member of a suppressed minority groups. The argument for uniqueness of the adolescent is based on biological, psychological, and sociological observations. From the biological point of view, it may be concluded that adolescence can be biologically defined as that period of growth between the terminal stage of childhood, that is, from the beginning of puberty to the onset of maturity or adulthood. But on the other hand, adolescence is identified not only by a particular period of physical growth but also by a period of mental and social growth. The article concludes that the consequent feeling of general alienation among adolescents manifests itself in many different ways which can be grouped as rebellions and non-rebellious. Generally speaking, the kind of behavior is dependent upon the social and institutional mechanism available for reducing the alienation.