The Issue of Loneliness and Isolation of Youths, Youth Detention Center Charges
The Issue of Loneliness and Isolation of Youths, Youth Detention Center Charges

Summary/Abstract: Alienation in the initial phase of adolescence is common and understandable, given a stage of development. It can be regarded as a phenomenon that is to forge a young man’s identity and to make them gain autonomy. Fromm shows that overcoming alienation is an element that makes the subject more efficient and can enable them to get answers to important existential questions (E. Fromm, 1996). A certain level of loneliness fosters personal maturity and integration. It is important for young people to contact with their friends and peers when they look for answers to their questions. However, they also need some time to think everything over and to have intellectual reflection in solitude. While charting their own pathway, they learn to satisfy two seemingly conflicting needs: autonomy and intimacy with others. On the one hand, they need to be together and on the other hand, they need to move away from social relations. Erikson states that the period of adolescence requires overcoming the so-called intimacy versus isolation crisis (E. H. Erikson, 2000). Adolescents who have already found their own identity, start looking for opportunities to join it with the identity of others. Communal behaviour of young people characterised by cordiality, closeness and openness is connected with a positive solution to the intimacy versus isolation crisis, and thus with a willingness to engage in certain relationships and communities. A sense of alienation among adolescents can be explained by development and a normative crisis. However, the natural alienation tendency of adolescents, when they feel detached and have a sense of strangeness to some external or internal reality, should be temporary. The negative consequences of not solving the developmental crisis, together with a deep sense of isolation and lack of adequate social support, are connected with the cognitive and emotional spheres of an adolescent and may lead to psychosocial consequences. If they are intense, they significantly modify the psychosocial development and functioning of an adolescent. The article describes the results of research on the sense of isolation of pupils of the Youth Educational Centres in Mazovia Province.

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