DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

George developed a party-guy persona that fits in with the London party gay scene,
and actually uses the term persona in describing it:
“What did I learn about myself? I think I learned that I was quite deluded. 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.” (George, p.6)
Frances suppressed her own personality in favour of one that is oriented to pleasing
her aggressive boyfriend, and describes her true self as being buried under this
persona:
“I really did feel that the lights were on but I was buried deep down inside there
somewhere.” (Frances, p.4).
Depersonalisation and the False Self
R.D.Laing (1965) was one of the post-Jungian proponents of the persona, and
he termed it the false self. The false self is constructed as a protective barrier of
acceptability, but while it prevents the inner world getting out, it prevents the outer
world from getting in, and can lead in dysfunctional cases to a sense of detachment,
depersonalisation and derealisation. Depersonalisation is a sense of feeling trapped in
a body that is not one’s own and an unreal world. In Laing’s words:
“This dissociation is characteristically associated with such thoughts as ‘this is like a
dream’, ‘this seems unreal’, ‘I can’t believe this is true’, ‘nothing seemed to be touching
me’, ‘I cannot take it in’, ‘this is not happening to me’, i.e. with feelings of estrangement
and derealization. The body may go on acting in its outwardly normal way, but inwardly it
is felt to be acting on its own, automatically.” (Laing, 1965, p.78)
Depersonalisation is described in the clinical literature as an experience of feeling less
alive, less real, like a machine or like the inert product of a mechanism outside of
one’s control, and correspondingly not feeling fully human (e.g. Simeon and Abugel,
2006). A number of cases in this study seem to describe an experience of
depersonalisation in their pre-crisis life situation:
“I did feel a little bit dead, a bit like a ghost sometimes. I remember sometimes I
would go for a walk around, or a little wander around, I wouldn’t really be feeling
anything, I wouldn’t feel like I was even there.” (Jack, p.10)
“They would have seen me as fairly malleable and easy going, but probably quite
empty, and a bit of a non-person actually.” (Gemma, p.9)
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