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I am not a child anymore. Quasi-rituals of leaving childhood in teenagers’ narrations. Anthropological psychology approach
Referring to both the psychological concepts of human development (Erikson, 1997; Labouvie-Vief, 1990) and its anthropological ones (Eliade, 1990; van Gennep, 2006; Turner, 2010), and embedding them in the psychology of myth (Pankalla, Klaus, 2010; Zagórska, 2007), the authors conducted an empirical exploration aimed at finding out whether the adolescents’ behaviours which serve to leave childhood bear the markings of contemporary rites of passage (in their initial phase). However, because these behaviours are highly degraded, residual, they were defined as quasi-rituals of leaving childhood, and in a broader sense – quasi-mythical behaviours (mythos-type behaviours). Analyzing the narratives of 40 teenagers aged 13–16, of both sexes, from a few lower secondary schools in a small and a big city and using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a number of this kind of behaviours were identified. It was found that teenagers – in the absence of socially sanctioned rites of passage and clear criteria of being adult – imitate some adult behaviours, often negative ones, hoping thereby to obtain the status of an adult. Quasi-rituals of leaving childhood are for adolescents a concrete expression of the activity of separating themselves from being perceived as children, but also from any attempts on the part of adults at imposing tasks of adulthood on them. The mythical overtones of such activities stem from the teenagers’ belief in the uniqueness of the adult phase of life, to which they ascribe divine qualities.