With its project ''Growth and development of children and adolescents'
' the Clinic for Psychological Medicine has opened a new field of stud
ying psychological profiles and the structures of certain age groups.
This study attempts to analyze thoroughly and define the psychological
structure and self-concept of an age which is the most dramatic in th
e development of a human being. The research is a contribution to the
mosaic of similar studies undertaken in the USA and the West European
countries. The subjects are 2500 adolescents. The first part of the re
search, presented in this paper, reveals similarities in their biologi
cal development and their own experiences of this development, but it
also points to the cross-cultural differences which shape the age of a
dolescence.