DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

homogeneity. For Jung, the removal of the persona and the expression of greater
individuality is the actual aim of individuation:
“The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false
wrappings of the persona.” (Jung, 1966, p.174)
Over the crisis there is a gradual lessening of the use of the persona and its conformist
act, leading to a more open expression of personal opinions, values and goals, which
in turn brings about greater individuality.
Another key dimension of Chapter 2’s description of human development
is that development is embedded in social systems (e.g. social groups,
relationship dyads, families) that are also developing interactively.
Developments across early adult crisis do indeed show an interaction with social
developments. The socio-cultural changes surrounding the period of early
adulthood were discussed in Chapter 2. In the 1970s early adulthood was seen as
being a time of limiting and narrowing one’s life structure to committed and
institutionalised channels at home and at work (Lidz 1976, Gould 1978, White
1975; Levinson, 1976), but demographic trends and more recent research (e.g.
Cabrera et al, 2000) suggest that now this structured set of expectations has been
increasingly complemented by alternative approaches to early adulthood,
characterised by a flexible integration of job, relationship, parenting and leisure, a
lessening importance of marriage and/or a permanent, full-time job and a less
stereotyped and traditional sense of gender identity.
The results of the study show that the trajectory of individual early adult
crisis mirrors this larger social development. Pre-crisis young adults are
generally in traditional and stable roles and are gaining the plaudits that surround
success in these roles. Post-crisis the change is invariably in the direction of
flexible or non-conventional alternatives, often non-marital relationships and
often multiple or freelance career roles. There is also a suggestion of developing
a less stereotyped gender identity over the course of crisis, further extending the
parallels to social developments. This isomorphic relation between the directions
of individual development and social development supports Bronfenbrenner’s
ecological theory of development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). He suggested that
social systems and individuals develop in synergistic ways so that changes at one
level of scale are created by, and reciprocally influence, changes at other levels.
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