Abstract

Two groups of people of 100 individuals each (teenagers, adults) have been examined through the questionnaire technique: 27 were engaged in athletic sport activities and 73 in amateur sports. They have been observed at the Sport Medicine Center of the F.M.S.I., conventioned with the U.L.S.S. in Giulianova. The data resulting from this inquiry show motivation differences between the two developing groups. Sports are practiced by teenagers as a motor need, as a discharge to ones aggressiveness and as an opportunity to socialize. Adults find in sports an escape from every day reality and the chance to spread social relations. Adolescence is a significant period in the development of ones personality and is the age in which an individual approaches sports. A young man takes part in a sports group convinced he will reach and valid alternative to his anxieties, to the moments in which he feels he cant fit in, to his conflicts, which are all tipical expressions of this evolutionary period. This way sports has a cathartic function, assuming, in the meantime, an important psychopediological meaning, helping the young man control, comand and sublime his throhs and distructive reactions. Verf.-Referat