by Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld

(Report of the fourth Lecture of a series of eight Lectures on “some problems of Adolescence” delivered at Friends House, London, N.W.1.)

It is my aim to-night to try to put before you the older adolescent. There are two periods in adolescence: the early period which may come in as early as 12 on, and the older adolescence which begins between 15 and 16, up to 18, 19, 20. These two periods have certain factors that are similar but, on the whole, it is the older group I want to try to put before you this evening rather than the younger, because the younger group merges more or less insensibly into the schoolchild, whereas the older group is met with, largely, outside school, just leaving school or in the upper parts of the public schools and presents problems of unity all to themselves.

You will remember that last week I told you that between the cotyledon and the mature fruit of any plant there were curious stages, stages in which only a gardener could tell what the plant was. First, the pretty little seedling everybody so much admires. You look around the garden at your early Spring seedlings and say, “How charming!” You go round the garden in the Autumn when a good many of the pretty flowery growths have been cut back, or in the Spring when the whole tree has been treated and you say, “What an ugly creature! How is it possible that something so nobbly or out-at-elbows and so peculiar can produce later a pear or a rose?”