2001 Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 11-22
Although the development of autonomy has been a long-standing and central concern to researchers interested in adolescent psychosocial development, there are little researches as to the impact of adolescent-parents relationships and peer relationships on the development of autonomy in adolescence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of adolescent-peer relations and adolescent-parents relations from the viewpoint of autonomy. In order to evaluate each person's development of the autonomy, the style to keep balance of needs between self and others was used. Semi-structured interviews were done to 1 male and 7 female students ranging 20-24 years old. Each interviewee was asked to speak freely about how to keep balance of needs between him/her and others such as peers and parents. Based on the transcribed data, their states of development of autonomy were classified to 5 categories. Out of the 5 categories, the state where autonomy had achieved was only one. This state had a power to influence others both in peer-relationships and in family-relationships to have equal relationships. Autonomy which is regarded as a developmental task in infancy (E. H. Erikson, 1950), was also thought to be important in adolescence. With the development of autonomy, adolescent could keep equal relationships between self and others. Adolescent peer-relationship was considered to represent his/her state of development of autonomy. In the field of psychoanalysis, it has been said that family relationships have influences to their children's human relationships. This study suggested that when children had a experience of equal human relationships, peer- and family-relationships could be reconstructed and changed to the equal human relationships.
