Adolescent Unrest

Attempts ro derive psychological and sociological principles by finding analogies with biological laws have long been considered unproductive (Sorokin, 1928, Chap. 4) . Nevertheless, great utility has been claimed for Bertalanffy's general systems analysis for identifying interdisciplinary parallels (Grinker, 1976; Miller, 1976). The gross phenomena of closely related subjects like behavioral evolution (Kuttner, 1960) or cultural and biological evolution (Kunner & Swan, 1974) can be easily united but a more critical test requires the discovery of common patterns in subordinate or smaller scaled processes. As a possible application of Bertalanffy's metatheory, we suggest that the social behavior categorized as the Youth Protest of the Sixties be interpreted as a phenomenon similar to the biological mechanism termed neoteny, fetalization, or pedomorphosis. When biological evolution reaches a dead-end, a novel environmental challenge may threaten a species which has exhausted its adaptive potential by a full commitment to a rigid life style (DeBeer, 1951). In such cases evolution may operate on larval or juvenile forms that still retain flexibility by virtue of their immature development. The standard example is the adult larvae of the Axolotl newt which escapes hostile land environments by remaining aquatic. The origin of adolescent unrest may stem from an accelerated technology that renders parental norms obsolescent (Mead, 1969) along with pressures resulting from earlier sexual maturity coupled with delayed economic independence. Once triggered by events, however, the search for solutions produces a schism between generations, with the young placing less reliance on conventional tactics and showing greater willingness to explore non-habitual cultural responses. A society accepting direction from youthful elements can be said to express a neotenic change. If fine-grained comparative analysis justifies the idea that youthful reformism is equivalent to social neoteny, an established evolutionary process, then the search for ocher parallels between psychology, sociology, and biology might reveal the common framework and broad structural resemblances postulated by the metatheory of general systems analysts

Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Erikson's stages of psychosocial development · Mechanism (biology · Miller · Neoteny · Parallels · Phenomenon · Schism · Ecology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Contemporary sociological theories

  Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin•Contemporary sociological theories•1928

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• An Hypothesis on the Evolution of Intelligence

  Open Access•Robert Kuttner, Robert E Kuttner•Psychological Reports•1960

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