ABSTRACT
The central emotional issue in late adolescence can be thought of as finding a sense of identity in relation to the parents. Whereas in the early and middle teenage years young people have to separate themselves from their parents in order to establish an identity of their own, as they approach adulthood their relationship to the parents has to be renegotiated. For a young person to begin to feel that he or she is an adult, it is necessary to have internal parental figures with whom to identify.
