ABSTRACT
Memories of the formative impact of their pre-teen and teenage years on their adult lives are not, of course, confined to novelists and media celebrities. Ordinary, uncelebrated women and men similarly remember their adolescent years making them, for better or worse, the grownups they are today. Despite outrage about the film of Lolita, and despite the current furore about sexual abuse, its frequent beginnings in adolescence, and the adolescent onset of the ill-effects of earlier abuse, are often forgotten. So too are other effects of adolescence in shaping the psychology of both sexes, for good and ill. Adolescence then became a major topic of research not only by psychologists but also by other scientists, writers, and artists. The preoccupation of turn-of-the-century writers with recording their teenage reminiscences might also have been due to increasing social pressure on people at the time to produce and confess themselves in terms of their sexuality.
