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 conflict is between
identity and role confusion. In adolescence people tryout
various roles in the quest to discover their own identities. The
resolution of the conflict occurs as sexual, political, career
and other identities are established. For those who still
experience confusion about roles the crisis is said to be
unresolved. Fowler (1984) identifies the adolescent stage of
faith development as the "Synthetic-Conventional" stage, in
which, having achieved the formal operational level of cognition
which allows the individual to think in terms of systems, the
individual is now capable of drawing together the elements of
him/herself and synthesizing the stories, values and beliefs
acquired in early life into a supportive and orienting unity.
Piaget (1967; 1973) was interested in how children think and
established a number of formative stages through which they pass
as their age and experience enables them to take on increasingly
complex cognitive functions. Piaget held that in adolescence the
individual supplements concrete thought with the acquisition of
formal thought, around the ages of eleven or twelve, which allows her/him to begin to think reflectively, i.e., on the ideational plane, and to form theories and systems of her/his own. This reflective mode establishes a tyranny over the egocentric thinking of the adolescent that is gradually reduced by its reconciliation with the concrete, real-world, thinking acquired earlier.
In terms of peer relationships Clinton's biography displays
the development of lifelong attachments to people who later
worked for him or with him in various political functions or who
were politically useful to him in Some way. Parent-child
relationships are far more...