This psycho-historical analysis of Bill Clinton concentrates on the period of his adolescence from the vantage point of three types of developmental theory. The theoretical perspectives are those of Erik Erikson, whose psychosocial approach was psychoanalytic in origin but transcended basic psychoanalytic theory by expanding into the are of relations between human beings and their social settings; James Fowler, who drew on Erikson's developmental schemes and others but concerned himself with the individual's development of faith; and Jean Piaget, whose theory dealt primarily with cognitive development in children but extended into adolescence and adulthood as well. The three theoretical perspectives are applied to three themes: peer relations, parent-child relations, and academics. Each of these themes is developed on the basis of early biographies of Clinton (Allen & Portis, 1992; Moore, 1992; Wills, 1992) compiled prior to his election as president. While the views of friends, relatives, teachers, and others in such biographical works are, of course, informed by hindsight there is nonetheless a tendency to be more open in their recollections than there may have been after Clinton's two terms as president. There is also less speculation about character and its flaws since very little of the scandalous elements of Clinton's private life had colored the accounts.
Erikson, Fowler, and Piaget were all stage theorists and each man proposed a certain stage of development as characteristic of adolescence. None of them viewed this in terms of strict age limits, however, and the transition from adolescence to adulthood could, for example, take place at any time between the ages of 17 and 24. Erikson (1968) held that at every stage of development there is a crisis whose outcome depends on the interaction between an individual's characteristics and the type of support provided by the environment. In adolescence, he argued, the
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