ABSTRACT
This chapter explores adolescent images of smoking and of smokers using a qualitative technique. It describes this technique and explains the intrapersonal dimensions of smoking images. The chapter considers interpersonal dimensions related to social status, social desirability and sophistication. The fact that adolescents who smoke are able efficiently to dissociate from attributes they consider unpalatable in other smokers may represent a defence mechanism with which to deal with their own ambivalence. Many adolescents perceived the use of cigarettes as indicative either of a sense of personal control or, conversely, of a lack of it. The images described may be categorised according to the attitudes and emotional dispositions perceived to accompany smoking. A number of adolescents associated smoking with relaxation and the reduction of stress. Social aspects of smoking were of key significance for the adolescents in the London study.
