DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

“If growth is to take place, however, one must actively pursue the new directions that
may have brought on the crisis, or create tentative experiments to adapt to the
changing conditions of self and circumstance.” (O’Connor and Wolfe, 1987, p.806)
All three models agree that in order to emerge successfully out of a crisis
and/or transition, a new balance must be found and a new life structure must be
built. The current model’s fourth phase of “Equilibration” is defined by new
commitments, new intrinsically motivated activities which are more selfdetermined,
and a new sense of balance and authenticity. O’Connor and Wolfe’s
corresponding final phase is called “Re-stabilising” and in it they describe new
“permanent commitments to a particular life structure” (1987, p.807). Hopson
and Adams describe a final phase, called “Internalisation”, in which a person
comes to develop a sense of inner control over their new life, relating to the
current model’s theme of enhanced agency and personal control.
In sum, the three models of transition and crisis conceive of a dynamic
trajectory of change involving rising discontent and constriction, an emotionally
fraught ending of a life structure, then an experimental search followed by a new
beginning. They divide this temporal process up differently but the
commonalities are clear. The similarities of these phase models suggest that the
current model may be generalisable to other samples and even other ages, in
whole or in part.
Denne and Thompson’s (1991) paper on the experience of transition is also
worth mentioning for some striking parallels. The researchers interviewed ten young
adults about their experience of transitions and reported certain invariant constituents
in all cases. All cases involved turning points around which life was reorganised.
There were changes described by all participants from living passively according to
social convention, towards living proactively and freely, which mirrors the change in
the current study from passive persona-based living to more self-determined action
and intrinsically motivated action:
“All ten participants also restructured their lives from living reactively according
to the expectations and demands of society or other individuals to living
proactively according to experiential awareness of their own values and
uniqueness.” (Denne and Thompson, 1991, p.119)
There were also descriptions of depersonalisation and self-alienation in the pretransition
state due to living according to the demands of others, which is a mirror
of the findings in many crisis in all three studies in this thesis:
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