Sport and Body Identity in Adolescence

The aim of this paper is to reflect about the experience of the body in adolescence and to explore the roles, the meanings and the representations of the body from an educational perspective. The change of the body represents the focal point of the adolescent's experience and the psychic re-elaboration of the perception of the body one of the most complex and critical developmental tasks. The complex process of constructing bodily identity requires the integration of internal needs, desires and emotions related to the body, and external demands, models and body standards that are proposed socially. Sport as a place of work with and on the body and it represents a space of educability aimed at enhancing the lived body, recognizing the quality of the performance rather than the result, offering adequate opportunities to express oneself through the body and communicate with others. Sports group can represent a space for the elaboration of bodily identity that supports the subjects in building a positive relationship with themselves through which they can live their body dimension in an authentic way.