DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

of reverting to his old life as a financial consultant. He had not renounced his desire
for success, but now it is a personal success as opposed to the conventional success
that he was aiming at before. Unlike conventional success, personal success is
accompanied by enjoyment, demonstrating a shift to an intrinsic orientation:
“I do still have this notion of being successful in an academic career, and would want
to achieve that. So that side is still there, on the other hand, in the actual work, I am
present and enjoying it.” (p.20)
The later stages of Claire’s crisis differ to the pattern shown in the other
participants of this study and the earlier two studies. Resolution to Claire’s crisis is
delayed for many years – hers is a more tragic story, in that she described being
consumed by unhappiness and self-doubt for ten years after the peak of crisis.
Resolution does eventually occur ten years later, but that is too long to be linked to the
events of the crisis. She eventually find a new relationship and this brings the chance
to embark on a philosophy degree. Her Dream was so energising that despite decades
of it being a purely personal fantasy, she does eventually follow it, and aims at
becoming an academic philosopher, and in doing so she finds the intrinsic motivation
she was looking for. In her words: “I had always been a frustrated academic, always.”
(18). She in fact uses a metaphor similar to the metaphor used by Guy in Study 2, to
describe the developmental effect of crisis on her life. Guy’s metaphor was that it
was like an acorn which had to be destroyed, turned to mulch, before an oak tree
could spring forth. Claire’s metaphor is of a rosebush needing to be pruned to grow:
“However you prune a rosebush will to a greater or lesser extent dictate how the
rosebush grows thereafter. There are certain organisms that don’t flourish unless they
are pruned quite radically, and I think there are certain elements of awareness,
consciousness, strength, determination, that are not realised unless you are given
enough of a hard time to wake up. There is a natural entropy in us that doesn’t
respond well to too easy a life.” (p.14)
8.11 Discussion
This study complements and adds incrementally to the findings of the
previous two. Three theoretical discussion points have emerged from these
findings. The first is that the renegotiation of gender identity is a key aspect of
early adult crisis in this sample. This is an area that was neither questioned nor
probed in Study 1, but did emerge in Study 2. The second is that three
dysfunctions in the persona are all manifest in the early crisis predicaments of
this sample, adding strong weight to the importance of the persona construct in
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