Adolescence - Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, and Religion

by G. Stanley Hall

This book is based on the author's Psychology, now in preparation, which should logically have been published first. The standpoint of the latter is roughly and provisionally indicated in Chapter X, with which it is hoped any reader with philosophic interests will begin. This point of view is further set forth in the last part of Chapter XVI, and some of its implications appear in Chapter XII, which should follow. That, recognizing fully all that has hitherto been done in this direction, the genetic ideas of the soul which pervade this work are new in both matter and method, and that if true they mark an extension of evolution into the psychic field of the utmost importance, is the conviction of the author. Although most of even his ablest philosophical contemporaries, both American and European, must regard all such conceptions much as Agassiz did Darwinism, he believes that they open up the only possible line of advance for psychic studies, if they are ever to escape from their present dishonorable capitivity to epistemology, which has to-day all the aridity, unprogressiveness, and barrenness of Greek sophism and medieval scholasticism, without standing, as did these, in vital relations to the problems of their age.

Genres: Psychology, Adolescence, Sociology

616 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Granville Stanley Hall was an American psychologist and educator. He was the first president of the American Psychological Association.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really slugged through this one. G. Stanley Hall is not a bad writer, actually for a scientific treatment its written in an entertaining style and there are a few moments in the book that are genuinely interesting like his treatment on pedagogy or masturbation, but these parts are few and far between.
The remainder of the book treats other subjects like psychology and physiology but does so with an underlying theory of evolution that would be accepted by no one today. Such as the framing as each human developmental stage being an expression of some lost ancestor, racialism, or the framing as internal organs competing against one another, the critique of evolution being a projection of strife in the "survival of the fittest" onto the universe is taken to a ludicrous level and is latent throughout the entire work.

Personally I read this book because I have found multiple sources that refer to this work and G. Stanley Hall as the founder of the term, or concept, Of adolescence or teenage. I was hoping to find in the text, a reason why after thousands of years of civilization there was at that time a need to separate "man" and "boy" with the new category of Adolescence. I, Unfortunately found very little.

There is today a new category that is proposed by Jeffery Arnett, A man who is a professor at the same college that Stanley Hall taught at called, Emerging Adulthood. It describes a novel phenomena of young twenty somethings who are for a number of reasons, incapable of or unwilling to be a function independent adult. It is obvious to me, and likely to many why this is. College debt, mass migration and a higher competition for jobs, combined with the suppression of real wages and increased real estate cost leads to less young Adults that are able support themselves. To me it seems impossible that there was not some similar story about the coining of the term, or concept of Adolescence, but like I said I did not find any clues in the text.

[Melike Ilkay · Rating 5 out of 5]

a tribute to the founder:)