often exceedingly strong. All the conventions of society and the
received rules for conduct are apt to appear mere tyrannous annoyances,
cramping the free expression of personality. Society itself seems
rather like a monster threatening to absorb and confine us. To be
compelled to consider others, and even to bow to authority, is to many
very bitter. "I will at all costs be myself" is the natural cry of a
human being at this stage, and because the world makes it difficult to
carry out that resolve life has a strain in it. Yet here also there is
something good. If each generation in turn did not thus demand freedom
and self-expression the world would drift into senile decay. We cannot
be independent of society. We cannot have an untrammeled freedom. And
we all learn that sooner or later. But because the urge towards newness
of life does reappear with every generation we do move on, though
slowly. And if the price of this pulse of life in adolescents is
restlessness, irritation, and even occasional depression the gain is
worth the price.

For girls the process is often specially difficult. The task that
confronts a girl at this stage is the task of accepting herself "as a
woman." I know it is not an easy task or so many girls would not be
heard saying that they would rather have been boys. No doubt one reason
why girls feel this is that often their parents, and especially their
mothers, have shown a preference for the boys in the family and have
accorded to them a favored position. The psychologists report that an
"inferiority complex" has thus been formed in many a girl's mind.
And thus a very real wrong is done to them.

And yet this is not the whole explanation of the matter. In many girls
there is a rebellion against their sex. Many hate the physical signs of
their developing natures. It seems to them they are being called to a