DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

to the world, which manifests as becoming a Samaritan’s volunteer. The experience
of working with the Samaritans leads to a reappraisal of ideal vocation, and a desire to
develop a new career. Neil decides to train to become a life coach, which involves a
two-year course of monthly modules.
Ben describes the period after his wife and children left as chaotic, as though
he was “thrashing around”. It involved counselling, workshops and trying out
meditation. He refers to it as a process of self-examination:
“So there was a lot of that going on – a process of self-examination, trying out this,
trying out that.” (p.5)
He goes on to describe that he was “looking round for alternatives”:
“I was looking round for alternatives. I got involved in green ideas, and they made
me think, perhaps I could go and live in a commune, or start a self-help organisation.”
(p.4)
This period, for Ben, is explicitly one of exploring and developing the self:
“Well it enabled me to explore myself much more fully and provoked me into
developing aspects of myself that otherwise I would not have done. It forced me into
reflection and action, because I did a lot of things as a way of coping with the
situation, and I think this enabled me to discover a lot of things about myself that I
could do – my potential, and all that sort of stuff.” (Ben, p.10)
Guy also had a clearly demarked period of exploration, and actually referred to
the period after the separation as being in “exploratory mode.” (p.8). This mode
involved writing poetry, anger-release workshops, growing his hair long, going to
expressive dance classes, getting involved with Kabala spirituality and also reading a
lot - up to six books at one time on both science and spirituality.
Guy describes how this exploratory search was a breakthrough as it was the
first time in his life that he had tried “to find out who I was and why I acted the way
that I did.” (p.3). Prior to the crisis and during early crisis, the self was a closed
structure, defined by his role as a bank executive, but now it was an open question,
full of potential answers. By embarking on a period of exploration, he could start to
reconstruct a new self and a new life structure:
“I could start to rebuild and reconstruct myself, create a new life for myself.” (p.3)
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