Circulares normativas sobre VDL

Italian researcher Carmen Leccardi (2005), writing from a “youth transitions” perspective, finds that while most young people are “actively coping” with the “new uncertainty” of the 21st century, “many … seem today to be suffering from [a] kind of widespread angst”. That angst is, for Leccardi, born from a “pervasive feeling” that while everything seems to be going faster, youth transitions are “almost snail-paced” producing an “insoluble contradiction” that generates a “feeling of ‘belatedness’ in regard to steps that … have lost their link to … temporal milestones” such as ending educational studies, starting work, or creating an independent family.

The idea of youth being a period that is angst-ridden is not new or unique to our era. Goethe’s first and most successful work during his lifetime, Sorrows of young Werther, is arguably the first novel about youth suicide in modern times. Published at the height of the romantic era in 1774, it is an example of existential angst carried to an extreme. It portrays its hero and his fate in what seems to be an almost callous, matter of fact manner so different to the clinical perspectives in contemporary research literature.

At times, adolescent angst has been regarded simply as a “normal” phase for young people to experience and pass through as they mature, an idea found in the work of Polish psychologist and psychiatrist K. Dabrowski. His “Theory of Positive Disintegration” was never fully completed in his lifetime. It views the chaos and angst

in young people’s lives as not pathological but as a “normal” part of maturing to a state of stability, where the ability to weather crises is achieved. It is hard to imagine Dabrowski’s theory standing up against the waves of pressure on young lives imposed by drug-induced psychosis, but his non-stigmatising, non-pathologising view of young people interests me: he asserts in the title of one of his books that

Psychoneurosis is not an illness (Dabrowski, 1972). Much of his research was focused on gifted young people and on excitability as a defining characteristic of the gifted. My son was definitely overexcitable (C. L. Bailey, 2010), and prone to existential angst. This spurred me to question how we can know what is “normal” in adolescent angst?

The concepts of existential angst and a search for meaning became companion concepts as I explored existential angst in young people, which seems to be an

understudied area of research. Hacker’s (1994) paper, “An existential view of adolescence” explores the development of abstract thought in adolescence, linking it to existential issues. He believes adolescents can be acutely aware of feelings such as the dread of death, the confusion of indecision, the hopelessness of meaninglessness, and the despair of isolation (p. 308). He calls for more research on how abstract thought develops, and on the ways adolescents “understand their personal worlds and what is of significance in those worlds” (p. 304). Drawing on Western philosophy and psychology, Hacker believes that adolescent existential angst is a response to an experience of meaninglessness and alienation (p. 316).

Sensing my own son’s existential angst, I gave him Viktor Frankl’s Man’s search for meaning to read in his last year. It is important for young people to understand their own personal isolation, loneliness, belonging and becoming as they find their place in the world – “many adolescents are so alienated from peers, family,

or society that a search for meaning becomes impossible” (Hacker, 1994, pp. 304,316).

Young adults who experience existential crises would seem to be suffering silently on a scale of difficulty that we do not know about, with an existential angst driven by both their own inner, private and psychological turmoil, as well as external, environmental pressures beyond their control. The connections between young

people’s mental health and their existential fears about the future and the environment are discussed by Eckersley, Cahill, Wierenga, and Wyn (2007); Gordon and Lahelma (2002); Lamont (2012); and Lindfors, Solantaus, and Rimpelä (2012).

Several researchers have brought to light evidence that gifted learners are particularly prone to existential angst (C. L. Bailey; Bratter, 2007; Eckersley et al., 2007; Ellsworth, 1999; Fitzgerald, 2005; Hacker, 1994; Lindfors et al., 2012). An overview of research that links gifted learners with a heightened tendency to experiencing fear and existential dread is provided by Lamont (2012) – along with practical ideas for parents to address the existential fears of their children. I first became aware of a possible link between gifted learners and existential angst through reading a small paper which claimed that “existential dread poses a threat to

adolescents’ self-esteem, productivity, and life itself”, which concluded that adults can, through a team approach, “reduce the amount of time youth languish in the throes of existential dread and lessen the threat of depression and suicide” (Ellsworth, 1999, p. 408).

Research on young people in China suggests illicit drugs are used to relieve the anxiety that arises from these “existential issues at this life stage” and “searching for the meaning of life” (To, Sek-yum Ngai, Ngai, & Cheung, 2007, p. 327). The idea of a quest for meaning brings the threshold concept of hope into focus.

2.4.2 Hope

With regard to hope, Australian research has highlighted the important role of hope in determining the trajectories of young people’s lives (Bishop & Willis, 2014; Eckersley et al., 2007; te Riele, 2010). Its counterpoint, hopelessness, is discussed in terms of young people’s existential attitudes, for example in research by Brassai (2012) – within the context of behaviour regarding health. Sometimes, the sense of hopelessness that young people with psychosis experience regarding their future can be shared by the mental health professionals who care for them (T. Lincoln & Beck, 2014) – a disempowering feeling which can be averted through specialised early intervention programs that offer individuals with psychotic disorders as well as their families “new hope for improving illness trajectories” (Cotton et al., 2016).

As a field of endeavour, youth research is “well positioned to play a lead role in exploring the links between people’s hopes and fears, their concerns of everyday life and the big picture questions about the future” hopefully creating “new spaces for dialogue between generations” (Wierenga, 2011), and importantly, I would add, between disciplines.

In school contexts, Larsen’s (2007) research on narrative counselling with adolescents revealed that hope was “ an implicit aspect” of the adolescent self, an unexpected finding for the author, who then posited the idea of an adolescent “hoping self” that is “pervasive” during adolescent development (p. 255).