DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

Living in a Straightjacket: The Constrained Self
For Guy and Neil, prior to their crisis, the sense of self was defined by their
role in business. Guy is adamant that he did not give the issue of identity any further
consideration than the job he occupied within the bank:
“Who was I? I was this network director for Parnell Bank.” (Guy, p.2) 6
He is explicit that at this point he was being controlled by cultural expectations, not
by his own motives:
“It was expectations, I think it was just cultural issues that were pushing upon me that
this was success.” (p.2)
He uses an analogy of being on autopilot to convey this sense of being
“programmed”:
“Every step that I took seemed like stepping stones that were placed in front of me,
and that this was the way to go. I don’t think there was ever a conscious thought
about the implications and consequences of what I was doing at the time. So I was on
autopilot.” (p.2)
Neil defined himself by being a successful businessman, a conventionally
well-trodden route to success and respect, and self-worth for him was imparted by
status and position. Neil describes feeling constrained, as this self was a façade. He
describes this as a form of protection:
“I was never really brought up to talk about my feelings very much. It wasn’t
something I was very familiar with at all, and I found it difficult.” (p.2)
“I think there was a bit of a façade there.” (p.10)
George defined himself by the role he has constructed for himself in the gay
club scene. It is an “image or persona” that he had adopted:
“I think there was this image or persona that I went around with, around club land
where I would attract people because at the time I was able to do that. But there was
something quite superficial about it. I didn’t like that aspect of myself.” (p.6)
To convey the notion of how this self was constrained, George uses the metaphor of
the self being in a straightjacket:
“The self that I remember back then was almost in a straightjacket, I felt very trapped,
and rigid.” (p.8)
This constrained self is not able to explore new possibilities, for it is
‘incapable of being expansive’ (p.7), so George felt trapped in the drug habit and the
unwanted life, with a “fear of being me, because I didn’t think that I was going to be
6 Parnell is a pseudonym for the bank in question
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