[Adolescence and adolescents: new meaning based on the social determination of the health-disease process].

: This study, of historical and dialectic referential, was written from the perspective of the redefinition of adolescence, and how it fits into health intervention. Recognizing the transdisciplinary character of this task, the objective of this work is to contribute to the nursing of the adolescent, learning by analyzing work is to contribute to the nursing of the adolescent, learning by analyzing works produced within Brazilian academic nursing studies. The empirical material consisted of 22 Masters dissertations with themes related to adolescence, from the decade 1984-1994. Investigated were the content of conceptual categories such as human being, society, adolescence/adolescent, health-illness process, nursing/nursing care and hte proposals of intervention driven towards this population. Observed was a narrow consonance between the content of these categories and the scientific referential of positivism which oriented 21 of the dissertations analyzed. There was a predominant concept of adolescence as a universal phenomenon and the adolescence was defined in opposition both to the adult, with emphasis on the medical biological paradigm for the interpretation of its health-illness process. Identified was the persistence of nightingale knowledge elements orienting the nursing intervention proposals which in turn emphasized education. The historical reconstruction of the concepts as well as their correspondence to practice permitted the formulation of new significance to the conceptual categories.