This paper is a theoretical essay that analyzes the historical development of the category of adolescence as a subject of Developmental Psychology. The core argument is that adolescents have been approached at a time, as passionate and unstable beings, and at the other, as rational selves. As a consequence of that approach, most of the meaningful questions regarding adolescence had been kept out of focus, and a normative picture of adolescence have dominated the field. The aim of this study is to offer a critical analysis on adolescence, adding a 'brick' to the construction of a novel epistemology of adolescence fertilized by critical approaches on self and identity such as, discursive psychology and the perspective of the dialogical self.
Adolescence; development of the self; identity; narrative; contemporary age