Explain the concepts of crushes and idealosm that occur in adolescence
Answers
consider crushes are of two kinds – identity crushes and romantic crushes. In both cases, the teenager feels smitten by a compelling person who captivates their attention for good and ill. (A third kind is the celebrity crush that shapes ideals and stirs fantasies, but there is usually no interpersonal contact to play them out. However, this is definitely where the market for celebrity posters comes in -- to decorate teenage bedroom walls.)
In all three cases, the young person largely projects onto another person idealized attributes the admirer highly values and wants to be associated with. Then she or he attaches strong positive feelings to the perfectly wonderful image that has been created. Crushes have more to do with fantasy than with reality, and they tell much more about the admirer than the admired. It’s because they usually prove unrealistic that in a relatively short time they soon wear off. But it is because of the idealization that crushes have such momentary power. This is why parents need to respect an adolescent crush and not dismiss or put it down. After all, it is an early approximation of love. While it lasts it is seriously held, so it should be seriously treated.
Identity crushes are formed by finding someone they much admire, want to become like, and treat as a leader or model they are eager to imitate and follow. Romantic crushes are formed by finding someone whom they find powerfully attractive, who they feel excited to be around, and with whom they want to spend a lot of time. In both cases, the person with the crush gives enormous power of approval to the object of their crush – wanting to be liked by them and wanting to be like them, willing to do a lot to get in the other person’s good graces. They go out of their way to be around each attachment.
There is a great outbreak of romantic crushes and gossip about them (“Guess who likes who?”) in middle school. By this time, early adolescence and the separation from childhood has caused young people to want to act more grown up, and sexual maturity from puberty has motivated them to act in more young manly and young womanly ways. Since girls tend to enter puberty before boys, they are more likely to experience the wave of crushes first, more drawn to boys than boys are to them, taking romantic feelings seriously that boys treat lightly or even laughably. However the time for same-age boys to become romantically smitten is not far off, and when it arrives a crush proves to be no laughing matter when they become smitten too.
Because a romantic crush is a potent mix of idealization and infatuation, it doesn’t require knowing another person well at all. In some cases a superficial impression can be provocation enough. “I like how she’s so quiet and watchful and keeps to herself.” “I like how what others think doesn’t matter to him.” As mentioned, although the crush appears to be about attraction to another person, it is actually about projection of valued attributes onto another person – a statement about what they find attractive. In this, crushes are very revealing. “My son is always getting crushes on young women who seem the opposite of him, as fun loving as he is serious.” Crushes are not only the stuff that dreams are made of; they signify a lot about the dreamer.
Of course, romantic crushes can have a risky side. You don’t want a teenage crush to become a fixation, a young person unable to stop daydreaming and fantasizing all the time about this person, for example. You don’t want the young person to act out under the influence of a crush in self-endangering ways, soliciting or expressing inappropriate interest, for example. And you don’t want the crush to be exploited by the object of the crush, an older adolescent taking advantage of a romantically besotted younger adolescent