Adolescent development HC 10
Other: Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan’s developmental progression of needs:
o Need for contact and tenderness
o Need for adult participation
o Need for peers and peer acceptance
Preadolescence
o Increase need for intimacy (with peers)
Adolescence
o Need for sexual contact/expression and intimacy with opposite-sex peer; self
worth synonymous with sexual attractiveness and acceptance by opposite
seks peers (lust)
o Need for integration in adult society
Late adolescence
o Need for friendship and sexual expression combine to focus on finding a long
term relationship
Changes in the “targets”of intimacy
Sullivan hypothesized that
o Intimacy with peers replaces intimacy with parents
o Intimacy with peers of the opposite seks replaces intimacy with same-sex
friends (Heterosexual perspective)
Actually new targets of intimacy are added to old ones
Other: Erik Erikson
Identity crisis
o Adolescents' most important task is identity vs. role confusion.
o Identity crisis should be resolved before they can successfully conquer the
next stage of development which is intimacy vs. isolation.
If you don’t have a sense of who you are, you can’t be intimate with
someone.
Intimacy versus isolation: normally confronted in young adulthood
o Isolation = don’t have the capacity to share yourself or be empathic.
o Close heterosexual relations within which procreation could be accomplished
o Problems: excludes possibility of intimacy in: homosexual relations, platonic
friendships, childless marriages
Intimacy is a threat to identity: lose tenuous self through closeness with another, if
unsure of self, cannot be intimate
Isolation: individual does not develop a capacity for sharing or caring about others.
Relationships will be superficial, competitive, antagonistic or all three
o Problems- consequences cannot be identified from cause
Others: Bradford Brown (1999)
Developmental model of adolescent love
o Initiation phase - (early adolescence) tentative, explorations (days, weeks)
o Status phase - first more serious relations, but linked to peer status (days,
weeks)
Friends are arbitrators
If you have a boy- or girlfriend, you will have a higher status
o Affection phase – express deeper feelings and more physical intimacy
(months)
Friends – eyes, arbitrators, support
o Bonding phase – (EA) more enduring and serious, discuss possibility of long
term commitment
, Adolescent development HC 10
Friends stay important, but only for support
Romantic relationships are important (B.B. Brown)
Involve a relationship – an ongoing pattern of interaction between 2 people who
acknowledge some connection to each other
Voluntary (in most Western cultures)
o – matter of personal choice, tenuous (it can end at any time, there is
attraction, but no commitment)
Some form of attraction
o (not necessarily intense or passionate, but does involve a sexual component)
Other forms of attraction beyond sex:
o Companionship, intimacy, caring, friendship,
o Later: commitment and exclusivity, attachment and caregiving
Ecological perspectives
Ecological perspectives emphasize the social and cultural contexts that encourage or
constrain close relationships and endow them with meaning and significance.
Ecological features include:
o Historical, social, economic, political, geographical, cultural, and institutional
and community conditions and characteristics that shape proximal
experiences.
o The most frequently studied contexts of adolescent romantic relationships are
networks of families and peers, ethnic/cultural contexts, religious institutions,
and the mass media.
Context of romantic and sexual development
Bioecological model
o Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994
Biosocial model
o Smith, Udry, & Morris, 1985
Biopsychosocial model
o Herdt, 2000
o Meschke et al., 2000
Multi-Systemic perspective
o Kotchick et al., 2001
Other: Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan’s developmental progression of needs:
o Need for contact and tenderness
o Need for adult participation
o Need for peers and peer acceptance
Preadolescence
o Increase need for intimacy (with peers)
Adolescence
o Need for sexual contact/expression and intimacy with opposite-sex peer; self
worth synonymous with sexual attractiveness and acceptance by opposite
seks peers (lust)
o Need for integration in adult society
Late adolescence
o Need for friendship and sexual expression combine to focus on finding a long
term relationship
Changes in the “targets”of intimacy
Sullivan hypothesized that
o Intimacy with peers replaces intimacy with parents
o Intimacy with peers of the opposite seks replaces intimacy with same-sex
friends (Heterosexual perspective)
Actually new targets of intimacy are added to old ones
Other: Erik Erikson
Identity crisis
o Adolescents' most important task is identity vs. role confusion.
o Identity crisis should be resolved before they can successfully conquer the
next stage of development which is intimacy vs. isolation.
If you don’t have a sense of who you are, you can’t be intimate with
someone.
Intimacy versus isolation: normally confronted in young adulthood
o Isolation = don’t have the capacity to share yourself or be empathic.
o Close heterosexual relations within which procreation could be accomplished
o Problems: excludes possibility of intimacy in: homosexual relations, platonic
friendships, childless marriages
Intimacy is a threat to identity: lose tenuous self through closeness with another, if
unsure of self, cannot be intimate
Isolation: individual does not develop a capacity for sharing or caring about others.
Relationships will be superficial, competitive, antagonistic or all three
o Problems- consequences cannot be identified from cause
Others: Bradford Brown (1999)
Developmental model of adolescent love
o Initiation phase - (early adolescence) tentative, explorations (days, weeks)
o Status phase - first more serious relations, but linked to peer status (days,
weeks)
Friends are arbitrators
If you have a boy- or girlfriend, you will have a higher status
o Affection phase – express deeper feelings and more physical intimacy
(months)
Friends – eyes, arbitrators, support
o Bonding phase – (EA) more enduring and serious, discuss possibility of long
term commitment
, Adolescent development HC 10
Friends stay important, but only for support
Romantic relationships are important (B.B. Brown)
Involve a relationship – an ongoing pattern of interaction between 2 people who
acknowledge some connection to each other
Voluntary (in most Western cultures)
o – matter of personal choice, tenuous (it can end at any time, there is
attraction, but no commitment)
Some form of attraction
o (not necessarily intense or passionate, but does involve a sexual component)
Other forms of attraction beyond sex:
o Companionship, intimacy, caring, friendship,
o Later: commitment and exclusivity, attachment and caregiving
Ecological perspectives
Ecological perspectives emphasize the social and cultural contexts that encourage or
constrain close relationships and endow them with meaning and significance.
Ecological features include:
o Historical, social, economic, political, geographical, cultural, and institutional
and community conditions and characteristics that shape proximal
experiences.
o The most frequently studied contexts of adolescent romantic relationships are
networks of families and peers, ethnic/cultural contexts, religious institutions,
and the mass media.
Context of romantic and sexual development
Bioecological model
o Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994
Biosocial model
o Smith, Udry, & Morris, 1985
Biopsychosocial model
o Herdt, 2000
o Meschke et al., 2000
Multi-Systemic perspective
o Kotchick et al., 2001
