ABSTRACT
The challenge to successive UK governments has been to effect the successful integration of youth into the adult community. Adolescence has conventionally been defined, in Western industrialized societies, in social psychological/biological terms with the accent upon maturation, period of transition, search for independence, and so on. Such a view is encapsulated by Friedenburg (1959):
Adolescence is the period during which a young person learns who he is, and what he really feels. It is a time in which he differentiates himself from the culture, though on the culture's terms. It is the age at which, by becoming a person in his own right, he becomes capable of deeply felt relationships to other individuals, perceived clearly as such.
