DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

efore the crisis Guy had lost the full use of this reflective faculty. He describes his
pre-crisis mindset as being “locked in to my mental picture of how life is and how it
should be” (p.10). He describes how the only thing he could see was the task at hand:
“I guess I was so focussed on delivering what I thought I had to do, that I wasn’t
necessarily seeing there was anything else.” (Interview 1, p.1)
“The only thing that was important was to do the task at hand.” (Interview 1, p.7)
The combination of a frenetic pace of life and being in this automatic mindset leaves
no room for questioning any course of action; he has no spare capacity or time to
observe and monitor his actions and the effect they have on himself and his family.
His job was to hit the targets that were given to him, no matter what the cost. He
described how before the crisis he had no time or ability to witness and reflect on his
actions:
“I’d get in, in the morning, and I would have a pack on my desk which would have
all my meetings which had been set up, all of the papers that I needed for those
meetings, and at the end of the day I would scribble all over those and make notes
and drop it on my secretary’s desk. She’d take the actions and I would pick up my
next pack and off I went. So that’s what I meant by autopilot. I wasn’t in control
of my destiny. And I guess it’s the concept of witness. I had no witness, no
chance to stand back and say what the hell are you doing?” (Interview 2, p.4)
“I think the whole issue is about not having the ability to see what is going on
around us. Up until the point where it happened, there wasn’t a problem…That
really is the point - we don’t see it, we are in it, in the midst of it. Until we can
actually step out and take that external perspective, so that we can witness what is
going on, that we can have the mindset which says there has to be a better way.”
(Interview 2, p.13)
Guy uses a number of verbs and adjectives to describe his pre-crisis actions that
suggest a mechanistic, automatic form of functioning. For example he described that
he was controlled by a kind of “programme” that he was executing:
“I think it was just the way I had been programmed.” (Interview 1, p.2)
“As I mentioned before, I was programmed and executing the instructions day in and
day out.” (Interview 2, p.14)
He also uses metaphors such as being on “autopilot”, to emphasise this sense of not
consciously deliberating on his actions:
“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.” (Interview 1, p.2)
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