One of the most reliable ways of building an identity is through violence. Teenagers are more desperate for an identity than any other age group, so they rely on violence a lot. Violence is supposed to inscribe marks of identity on their bodies.
Teenage boys tend to use others for this purpose. They pick fights and try to get hurt in a variety of ways.
Teenage girls tend to inflict violence on themselves through starving, cutting, etc.
Clarissa's Blog 
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..
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i know, life is crazy.
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I guess that physical exercise will prepare me to face life contingencies. This is exactly why I am heading there right now.
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Really I think the search for identity is a feature of modernity. If you have a life, you don’t look for an identity.
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Then I don’t have either. This is what daughter says and I have to admit she is right!.
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Teenagers aren’t purposely looking for identity. They’re suffering for the first time in their lives peer pressure. They don’t know how to react about it and the first reactions come as violence, and if they can’t react this way they hurt themselves blaming their bodies for their incapacity to deal with this pressure.
Identity is formed as a result of building more strategical self-defense mechanisms.
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Peer pressure is quite heavy in children, as well, so I doubt your explanation is right.
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@Stille:
Small children show signs of violence as early as significant peer pressure is present. Have you observed children in poor/neglected households and neighborhoods, how relatively violent they are?
On the other hand have you observed violence in children raised at home with no or minimal contact with other children?
Significant peer pressure typically appears until adolescence. For several reasons among them, that (significant) sexual interest has awakened, and that adults (parents, teachers) take less of a controlling/guarding role over teenagers.
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“On the other hand have you observed violence in children raised at home with no or minimal contact with other children?”
– Yes, absolutely. Those who suffer from infant rage don’t need other children at all to experience it.
Peer pressure becomes important during the first transitional period of development that begins at the age of 5-7. This is when parents stop being the central most important force in a child’s life. Many parents freak out completely when it happens and rush to hurry these connections of a child to the group. But that’s a different story.
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“Yes, absolutely. Those who suffer from infant rage don’t need other children at all to experience it.”
Indeed, abusive parents belong in the same category as poor/neglected households.
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Peer pressure is an integral part of collective identity. If you don’t want a collective identity, you will never experience peer pressure.
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@Clarissa
Sounds like the egg and the chicken problem. Children just want to be “happy” or better said hormonally stable. This can be achieved either by social acceptance in the group, or full withdrawal. You don’t normally have a choice. You have to go to school, go to work where peer pressure is unavoidable.
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It’s not unavoidable, especially in adults. Clarissa just explained how to avoid it 😉
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I never experienced peer pressure.
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@ muster you
I didn’t experience significant peer pressure during my adolescence. I was never violent, nor hurt myself in anyway. I experienced that later in life. I felt both the urgency to respond violently and to victimize myself as well.
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Oh. I see. Are you saying there was a stage you missed?
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no.
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Ok. I don’t think it is a necessary stage either. generally, the community as a whole acts like an organism, so energies of different sorts are directed in different directions. All communities have a measure of aggressive energy in them, systemically and biologically generated. This energy can either explode outwardly, into other communities, or inwardly onto itself, or both. With very aggressive, warlike communities, the center of the society can feel very peaceful, as all of the negative and dynamic energies are directed on the peripheries. In democratic, “individualistic” societies, the individuals bear more of the brunt of the community’s aggression. Identity formation is not viewed so much as a collective activity, but one required of each individual, by themselves.
Here is a video I just made about the reason why and how some people do not form identities much at all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfwoGG5hUog
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They pick fights and try to get hurt in a variety of ways. (Clarissa)
Ummm, not so much. The majority of males who use violence on others are doing so for either protection(against bullying) or as a means to inflict pain on others because they are angry(usually because they were bullied).
As a male who went through that phase I can tell you I preferred marking someone else with violence. I didn’t much enjoy getting hit as I did doing the hitting. 😉
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The same thing occurs with gender identity.
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Both boys and girls cut themselves when I was in high school. If you were an attractive boy who cut, it made you mysterious, sexy, and tragic. If you were an attractive girl who cut, it made you take on a Victorian era desirability based on your vulnerability and fragility.
If you weren’t attractive, and you cut, you were seen as pathetic and attention-seeking. Being a teenager sucked, but at least being unpopular and awkward saved me from having permanent scars, in retrospect.
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This is fascinating. It rings true with me.
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