DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

a cellar, it’s really suffocating…So it was like everything was coming in, but there is
this bit of you that wants to explode. So there is pressure out too.” (p.7)
Lilly was so depressed by this situation that she attempts to commit suicide. She is
found by her flatmate passed out the floor, having consumed a bottle of painkillers,
and is taken to hospital, where she has her stomach pumped out. When she recovers,
she resigns from her job and moves to London to be with her friends. She moves
back in with her mother.
Claire resents and dislikes her job as a management consultant, which she
feels duty-bound to stay in for her children. Then after a whirlwind romance she
marries, and she is finally able to leave her job to look after house and children. She
stated that the reason for getting married was that she felt it was the last opportunity
she would get to be at home with her kids. She put aside her intellectual aspirations
of becoming an academic for the “chocolate box” aspiration of domestic motherhood.
She indeed did find the time she spent with her children fulfilling, once in the new
marriage, yet in her vicarious aspirations for her children, she was still extrinsically
motivated. Despite the fulfilment of spending time with her children, she still feels
like a “frustrated academic” (p.18), and feels as if she is living for her children, more
than for herself. Then her husband becomes violent, jealous and aggressive and after
one particularly brutal episode she leaves him, leading to another separation and a
profound sense of loss, grief, self-doubt and pain.
8.9 Dissolution of the Dysfunctional Persona and the Emerging Feminine Self
After leaving the pre-crisis job and/or relationship, rather than replace the
dysfunctional persona with another, all six individuals make an attempt to find an
identity and a role which reflects their sense of private self (i.e. their interests, dreams
and passions) and so avoid constructing another false front. This rebalanced self is in
all cases more open to feminine values and virtue than their pre-crisis self. There are
reports of opening to a more emotional, caring, sensitive, nurturing and relational, as
the dysfunctional and masculinised persona that defined their pre-crisis life structures
is shed.
Victoria described how she wanted to be a man when she was in Italy, because
this meant responsibility and power, and this led to an occasional masculine persona.
She described the change over crisis from a dissonant persona to a more harmonious
relation of self and behaviour, and links this to emerging femininity:
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