American Teen Case Study Analysis Essay

Case Study Analysis: American Teen and the Psychosocial Theory

Background:
Much like the movie classic The Breakfast Club, American Teen is a documentary film that focuses on five different stereotypes of high school students. The five stereotypes discussed in the film are “the typical popular girl, the basketball star, the good-looking guy, the band geek, and then finally, the rebel, or in this case, the arty type” (Roberts & Burstein, 2008). The adolescent I chose to analyze from the film was the band geek. The band geek in this film was Jake. “He was funny and outgoing one-on-one, however, he was very shy in certain group situations” (D-Man, 2010). He played the clarinet in the marching band and also really loved video games. He lived with

Erik Erikson developed the psychosocial theory, and “he describes our social experiences during our whole life span using eight different stages” (Cherry 2015). The first four stages are “trust vs. mistrust; which describes how the child needs to be able to trust their adult figures, autonomy vs. shame and doubt; which is about person control, initiative vs. guilt; which is about children learning to lead others, industry vs. inferiority; which is about gaining a sense of pride in things” (Cherry 2015). The final four stages are “identity vs. confusion; which begins the sense of self, intimacy vs. isolation; which explores personal relationships, generativity vs. stagnation; which focuses on career and family, and the final stage being integrity vs. despair; which describes reflecting back on life” (Cherry

For example, I think that he does not really connect with the initiative vs. guilt stage or the generativity vs. stagnation stage because he is very shy and would not necessarily like to lead others and the movie did not really mention anything about his careers. I think he would connect with the intimacy vs. isolation stage the most because the documentary focused a lot on his personal relationships, mainly him finding a girlfriend. Another example of connecting Jake to this theory would be that he definitely has a sense of self during the identity confusion stage because he knows what he wants and goes for it. Those are some examples of how Jake connects with the psychosocial