DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

without yet committing to a new role. This supports the findings of Mezirow
(1991) and Horton (2002), who both found that further study in adulthood is often
used as a transformative tool and is linked to significant life change.
A New Flexible Life Balance and an Evolving Self
In order to create a new life structure, the individual must once again take
on the challenge of commitment, of role and restriction, but this time with the
fruits of an extended period of self-examination, experimentation, enhanced selfunderstanding,
and a renewed intrinsic orientation. Post-crisis roles are different
from those of pre-crisis. New relationships taken on are more reciprocal and less
controlling, and new jobs are less all-consuming and more closely aligned with
interests and identity. Almost all individuals moved from their moratorium to
commit to new roles, and this brought a new life structure equilibration (arguably
Jack, Angela and Violet still showed ongoing evidence of being in Phase 3).
Pre-crisis, there was typically a split between these two sides of self, with
various descriptions of “hiding” interests, of living behind a “façade”, playing “a false
role” or suppressing true feelings. After the crisis, passions, interests, and private
dimensions of self are more closely aligned with actions and careers, leading to a
more integrated life structure, or what Denne and Thompson called a “more balanced
relation between self and world” (1991, p.123). The self after crisis changes from
being role-defined to being open to development than before; identity is no longer a
static role-based label, but an ongoing, open-ended process of opening to potential,
and exploring possible selves. Many of the respondents, such as Mary, Rob, Guy and
Jack, explicitly say that they now live without a solid identity, but continue to let
themselves grow and change. This is congruent with Rogers’ conception of how the
self develops and matures:
“Thus to an increasing degree he becomes himself – not a façade of conformity
to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, not a front of intellectual rationality,
but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process – in short, he becomes a
person.” (Rogers, 1961, p.122)
6.8 Summary and Reflections
This chapter has not only introduced a substantial amount of data, but has also
introduced new theory, in the form of the persona / false self. This theoretical
construct was first considered in real time after data collection and during the analysis
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