SEXUALITY IN EARLY ADOLESCENCE
Early adolescence, the ages from twelve through sixteen, is marked by two major changes in most teenagers’ lives: pubertal maturation and the transition from elementary to high school. Both processes have profound and often stressful effects on the adolescent’s environment and personality in general, and both are intimately interwoven with psychosexual development. The purpose of this chapter is to focus on the biological aspects of early adolescence and to delineate the probable role of hormones and somatic maturation in psycho-sexual development—”probable” because the psychoendocrinology of puberty is a highly complex, interdisciplinary area in which research encounters tremendous logistical and methodological difficulties and in which, consequently, very little has been done. Although it seems obvious that puberty marks the attainment of full reproductive as well as of sexual capacity, the latter aspect is by no means clearly established. Part of the problem is that we know relatively little about childhood sexuality, with which we have to contrast pubertal and adult sexuality if we want to assess these changes. Also, because there are so many social pressures exerted on sexual behavior, it is difficult to disentangle the biologic from the social influences, particularly since both are likely to exert their effects interacting with each other. Systematic correlative studies of somatic-endocrine and psychosexual development in normal puberty have yet to be done. Currently, the major evidence for a role of biologic factors in psychosexual development comes from three indirect sources: (1) the data on the role of sex hormones in adult sexuality, (2) puberty studies on other mammals, and (3) sexual behavior in children and adolescents with pubertal abnormalities.
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