DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

lifespan and the context of relationships, families and jobs. It is deeply
ecological in nature. This version of crisis is what Slaikeu (1990) suggested
would be a step forward from Caplan’s theory of crisis. Caplan’s four phase
model of crisis, which was summarised on page 15, is intra-individual and does
not consider the changing relationships of person to social groups during crisis.
Slaikeu hypothesised, without research to back his claims up, that crisis may not
just be a process of coping with stressful stimuli but may rather be a systemic
process involving shifting relations with family, work organization and cultural
expectations. Slaikeu suggested that research and intervention on crisis should
take into account both external and internal factors, and he suggested that this
could be achieved using Levinson’s concept of the life structure, which integrates
internal and external factors in a developmental framework (Slaikeu, 1990). This
research fulfils Slaikeu’s vision for crisis research and theory, for the crisis
process is empirically found to be intimately social, and employs Levinson’s
theory to aid interpretation. Crisis starts with a social system such as a work
group or a relationship dyad or a family that is felt to be oppressing the
individual. Then there is a change as separation occurs from this social system,
followed by a moratorium away from social commitments and embeddedness.
The fourth phase sees resolution in a healthy and balanced social ecology in
which a person is functionally involved in multiple social systems, but does not
feel in any sense constrained or negated by his or her involvement in them.
Crisis was given an a-priori definition, in order to recruit individuals to be
interviewed for this project (see page 74). The basic defining criteria were
sparse; they included a presence of negative emotion, stress, a sense of being out
of control, a crisis duration of one month or more, a personal sense of the time
being one of crisis and a conclusion at least a year ago. It was mentioned on the
same page that at the end of the project a clearer definition of early adult crisis
would be possible. The eight precepts of early adult crisis at the end of Chapter 9
provide that new definition, but for the sake of ever greater parsimony, they can
be further condensed into a one sentence definition. An early adult
developmental crisis is…
…An episode during which relationships and/or jobs that are dissatisfying and dissonant
with the self are ended, leading to emotional upheaval and loss of identity followed by
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