Adolescent Psychosocial Assessment: African American Youth

Social History and Background

The subject of this assessment is an 18-year-old Black, African American male student in good general health, currently residing in Washington, DC.

The subject's family lives in an apartment situated within a cluster of residential complexes in Washington, DC. The household is consistently active. The family includes two boys — Zebulon and David — who still rely heavily on their mother's attention. The father, Ervin, is currently unemployed and uses a wheelchair following health challenges he has faced over the past several years. The mother, Monique, works part-time as a writer. A primary poverty indicator for the family is difficulty paying bills and the inability to afford transportation (Sherman, 2012).

Several cultural factors support the family. They maintain strong social networks, and family members demonstrate a cooperative spirit and willingness to share responsibilities. The family is also deeply religious and spiritual. The subject's personal interests include watching television, participating in sports, engaging in creative activities, reading, and listening to music.

Theoretical Frameworks for Human Development

According to Albert Bandura, a critical element of human learning occurs through imitation — a process that involves significant cognitive engagement. A great deal of information is acquired simply by observing models, which is then mentally encoded. Bandura's model offers deep insights into learning through observation and imitation.

One of Bandura's broader concerns is the process of socialization — the means by which members of society are induced to behave in socially acceptable ways. This process has a major effect on all types of behavior, including technical skills. For instance, most teenage boys in the United States feel pressure to learn how to drive before they can feel compatible with their social group. However, driving is not expected of teenagers in all cultures. Social conduct of wider relevance follows similar patterns: the socialization process ensures that children behave in gender-acceptable ways. Boys are taught to behave in masculine ways; girls are taught to behave in ways expected of women. As people grow older, they depend less on external reinforcement and begin constructing their own internal standards to govern their behavior (Crain, 2014).

Erik Erikson proposed that all human beings pass through eight developmental stages from birth to death. The adolescent stage demands that individuals discover themselves as separate entities from their families — a necessary step in attaining ego identity. This stage pressures the individual to determine who they are and where they fit within society. It involves integrating earlier experiences into a coherent life philosophy. Erikson also proposed that adolescents may choose a psychosocial moratorium — a period of time and space to explore different activities and life experiments, such as travel and study, before achieving ego identity (Reubins & Reubins, 2014).

This stage also marks the beginning of sexual maturity and the development of a positive relationship with the productive world — both serving as clear markers of the transition from childhood to adolescence. As adolescents search for ways to regulate themselves in the face of psychosocial change, they are expected to develop a meaningful identity that integrates past, present, and future. The confusion arising from self-exploration can make adolescents intensely concerned with how they appear to others, leading to preoccupation with peer groups, cliques, and social belonging. The value system one carries into adult life begins forming at this stage (Chávez, 2016).

From a psychoanalytic Person-in-Environment (PIE) perspective, oedipal feelings re-emerge with sudden force during adolescence. Teenagers often feel resentment toward the same-sex parent, while unconscious incestuous feelings toward the opposite-sex parent are common but typically suppressed. When oedipal feelings first emerge, the adolescent may feel an urge to escape, experiencing discomfort and tension in the presence of parents and relief when apart from them.

Some adolescents cannot tolerate being at home and may run away. Others remain but adopt a distant, boarder-like attitude — retreating to their rooms and feeling free only among peers. Still others construct psychological justifications to avoid their parents, engaging in blanket condemnation as a means of emotionally detaching from parental figures (Crain, 2014).

The subject's development is significantly shaped by his residential environment and the broader environmental factors surrounding it. All adolescents undergo a wide range of transitions — cognitive, biological, and social — that align with the normative developmental changes expected between childhood and adulthood. As an African American male in the United States, however, the subject is not expected to navigate the same developmental landscape as his white peers. He lives in a world where racial prejudice is a real and recurring stressor that demands active coping strategies.

Applying Theory to the Interviewee's Development

Youth who face stress and prejudice regularly may develop negative identity schemas, leading to a sense that something essential is missing from their identity. While their circumstances may help define who they are, they risk living in a persistent state of identity crisis. Fortunately, the subject appears to manage stress and prejudice constructively. His coping approach allows him to resist negative pressures and channel energy into productive behavior (Brittian, 2012).

The subject is an adolescent on the threshold of adulthood. The information informing this assessment was gathered through interviews with his family regarding family origins, personal struggles, community challenges, and available support systems.

The subject largely conforms to the expected developmental milestones for late adolescence. He demonstrates well-developed formal operational thinking, including hypothetical reasoning — the ability to consider the consequences of thoughts and actions he has not yet experienced. He can evaluate multiple possibilities and construct logical courses of action, accepting or rejecting hypotheses through reasoning. He also exhibits uneven cognitive development, mixing logical reasoning with emotional responses, which is consistent with his age group.

In social terms, the subject values understanding, conscious choice, trust, and loyalty as the foundations of friendship. He regards honesty and integrity as prerequisites for trusting adults. He adheres to the golden rule of moral conduct and respects the law as a necessary framework for a functional society (Sigelman & Rider, 2009).