Adolescence Hanging in the Balance: Ego and Self in Film

Abstract

Adolescence is widely recognized as a highly tumultuous period between childhood and adulthood in which the individual is tasked to forge an independent identity during potentially destabilizing biological, psychological, social, and cognitive expansion. This research explores the ego-self dynamic of the adolescent psyche as defined by the Developmental School of Analytical Psychology and depicted in American films. The author employs a hermeneutic methodology that uses Jungian theory with archetypal and developmental lenses to examine multiple aspects of the representative adolescent as social construct. The study engages cinematic depictions of intrapsychic dynamics that encourage growth, resiliency, and, ultimately, ego-self axis stabilization, particularly via deintegration-integration and alienation-inflation cycling evident in the psychologically immersive nature of narrative imagery. It finds that the archetypal resonance and narrative subthemes present on screen in stories of adolescents invite a less pathologized, more empathic, and potentially transformative perspective on this critical time period of individuation in which the ego establishes objective and reflective positioning in relation to the self, commensurate with first-half-of-life directives.