Toshiaki Shirai

This paper is to describe the heart of Japanese Association of Psychological Science as the followings: First, the research questions rise from the problems themselves, but not from the research methodology at first; Second, we perceive the person as a subject to construct his or her life, but not as a object that is just studied; Third, we see phenomena historically and critically. We specify these views to say that we understand a person as a subject with right: First, there is the relationships of equality, but not that of authoritarian and obligation; Second, assertion of right is owing to the duty to other people, but not only to his or her benefits; Third, it is fostered by the expectation-system among members who share goals.

This paper is to clarify how our lives arise through the following three studies. First, a female who is a graduate student to be trained in university to a teacher of physical education at a high school is interviewed on how she connects such life goal with the experiences of past life events as a gymnast. The results show that, unexpected events lead to her recall of her wish when she was a child and then she shares her wish with colleagues, which process makes her set the future goal. Second, a male who is age 50's and a teacher is interviewed on how he overcomes a life crisis. The results also show that unexpected events lead to the recall of his previous experiences as his tale. Third, a questionnaire is administered to 71 undergraduate students whose age range is from 10' to 60' to describe expected and unexpected events at the moment. The results show that unexpected and expected events lead to their constructing of the sense of continuity and acceptance of their life limits and irreversible time.

We had an interview with career counselors at the institute of career services in order to study the process of career independence among young part-time jobbers who want to get full-time jobs. As the results of interview, it suggested that young part-time jobbers tend to have lack of self-understanding, difficulty of self-disclosure, and/or lower level of self-esteem reflecting the immaturity of internal career. Based on the results, we constructed the process model of career independence for young part-time jobbers. It suggested that the intervention of career counselor approached to whether behavior or consciousness, finally certain changes took place in internal career, and these changes caused the action to get full-time jobs.

This study examined whether adolescents' transition to society is promoted by social trust, i.e., their perception of society as trustworthy. Social trust has been emphasized in terms of citizenship, and based on the assumption that membership in voluntary associations is a central element in the building of society. College and junior college graduates (N=8,336) ages 23-39 completed an on-line questionnaire in which social trust was measured by a sentence completion test. The findings first showed that social trust was not only the result of a transition to life in society, but also a cause of the transition. In addition, marriage, income, participants' college rankings according to the difficulty of entrance examinations, and social capital formed during college, were all positively related to social trust. It appears that the mechanism of social trust as it promotes transition to life in society should be clarified in further research.

I have advocated "Transformative and Consensual Validation" as a research method in adolescent psychology, to help understand the adolescent as an agent in their own development. This method is based on the following two requisites: First, research should focus on the process of participants' transformation, which occurs through the awareness of who they are. Second, the changes measured by a researcher should be confirmed by the participants themselves. The review of four empirical studies that used this method suggested that, only when participants shared the research frame, could they support the research results. The paper concludes that further studies, beyond the educational settings in which previous studies were done, are needed in order to generalize from the findings.

<p>The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between depression tolerance or social network and desistance from delinquency. Questionnaires assessing depression tolerance and social network were administered to 110 boys (age range: 14 to 19 years, mean: 16.6 years, SD: 1.48) in a juvenile classification home. Factor analysis revealed that the depression tolerance consisted of three factors; isolation tolerance, anxiety tolerance, and self-disclosure. When first timers were compared with repeaters, the former tended to demonstrate more positive self-disclosure and to feel more parental support. However, such a relationship was not observed in isolation tolerance and anxiety tolerance. These results indicate that the interaction between the self-disclosure shown by these boys and the support from their parents and others seem to facilitate desistance from delinquency. The process of this interaction needs to be further clarified in the future.</p>

The transition to an adult life in the community refers not only to organizational socialization in the workplace, but also to constructing individuals' lifestyles in their transition to adulthood. Previous studies on career development in the transition from school to work and social life as an adult were reviewed from this viewpoint. The results were as follows: (1) The recently increased desire of young people for self-actualization in their employment can promote their exploration of jobs. (2) Individual vulnerability can make entry into the labor market and the initial job assignment difficult, and, in turn, the resulting unemployment and drift can increase the level of psychological symptoms. (3) Social support from supervisors and peers on the job, autonomy and responsibility in the organization, continuity between previous/desired occupations and the present one, and a temporal perspective (integration between the past, present, and future) are needed. (4) On a macro level, continuing education and support from the community are also needed. (5) Finally, the necessity of special supports for socially disadvantaged young people was mentioned.

This study was to clarify how educational competition has effected on the development of temporal aspect of self in adolescence. Previous studies showed that young people decreased in their hope from primary school to high school. From the developmental viewpoint, it may be owing to development of realism in the settings of educational competition. At the same time, it might suggest that acceptance of anxiety and/or depression that they may face along with growing up in contemporary competitive society can bring them to get their hope, which may be possible if they can receive social support from adults surrounding them. Citizenship is emphasized to be necessary for young people to commit with society in transition to adulthood.

The objective of this study was to identify the processes and conditions of the career independence of "freeters," which is a process they use for selecting career paths to become financially independent of their parents and to realize personal and societal values. This paper is divided into four sections: First, we briefly review the discussion on freeters in Japan and point out their psychological problems. Second, we examine the relationship between the freeters' career patterns and the normal ones, which are considered desirable in traditional career development theories, and indicate the shortcomings of these theories. Then, we introduce a new theoretical framework called the career construction theory (Savickas, 2002) for explaining the career paths of freeters. Third, in discussing the career independence of freeters, we describe the importance of the idea of time perspectives, and clarify how to support freeters in their independence by considering their time perspectives. Fourth, we suggest practical possibilities for providing support to freeters. Finally, based on the above discussions, we speculate the issues that are important for examining the career independence of freeters and list the prospects for the new stream of adolescent psychology.

In order to clarify if resilience from delinquency can be brought by an encounter with mentors for boys or girls who had competence to engage earnestly with tasks and to hold depressions, two persons who had experienced delinquency were interviewed. Findings showed that, first, resilience from delinquency needed reframing of the images of their parents, which were mediated by the arrangement of other adults; second, it needed competence to engage earnestly with tasks or the one to hold depressions. Thus the findings might support the hypothesis partially and therefore needs further examinations.

This paper reviews the discussion on the "17-year-old problems" which went on in the Seinen Bukai (the research group for youth and adolescent problems) of Japanese Research Association of Psychological Science (JRAPS) to explore the future research tasks. At first, Adolescence in Japan was discussed from the viewpoint of history. The concept of adolescence has been established since the age of the Industrial Revolution. As adolescents were not thought grown-up or adult, they were alienated from society and driven to the peripheral area. They were likely to be eliminated from society as dangerous. Secondly, the problem was discussed from the viewpoint of student culture at junior high school. In 1996, both at school with serious problems and at those without problems, students supported those who had gone bad. In 2000, however, most students did not support those who had gone bad. Junior high school students tended to regard those who had gone bad as a different kind of students. Finally, the research group discussed mind change of juvenile delinquent girls living in reformatory. In this discussion, the loss of the basis for reliance, making negative self images and the difficulties in having sense of security in personal relationship were pointed out as unchanged aspects of juvenile delinquents. Contrarily, adhesion to their academic backgrounds, the lack of close friend, the lack of resistance to violence and the change in the relationship with their family were pointed out as their unchanged aspects. Based on the discussions above, a core problem of the recent youths and adolescents could be alienation. Especially, those who had gone bad were alienated and eliminated from society, school and family, and then driven to the peripheral area of their society. This alienation should be discussed further not only as youth and adolescent problem but that of those living in this modern society.

Part-time jobbers have recently increased especially among those who graduate from upper secondary schools owing to the reconstruction of their labor market in Japan. They are seen as having no purpose and low reality of their careers, as they often seem to say, "I do not know what kind of jobs are suitable to me. I wand to explore them and then I want to become a regular worker around them in 3 years", for example. This paper suggests that those who have lower resources tend to become part-time jobbers and therefore can do noting without emphasizing on their subjective aspect of career choice. They need to be constantly supported by adults and colleagues that they encounter in order to form their management of their own careers.