DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

in that she is part of a dyadic relationship, and part of a drug-dealing circle as a result. She is passive,
not acting from her inner world but for Pete, the other. Its not that she’s never had agency or
autonomy, but in this relationship it becomes utterly subdued under the force of Pete, the forceful,
unpredictable and profoundly emotionally unstable other half.
31/5/04
Frances is passionate about travelling and waitressing. She is clearly someone who gets enthused by
the world, and knows what she enjoys doing. She loses all joy during the trapped crisis episode, and
stops travelling. Indeed Pete makes her feel very bad about travelling – he berates her for going to
India at the beginning of their relationship. When she finally emerges from the relationship, her first
desire is to re-contact herself, and the way she does that is by going away again, getting out of England.
It is time to find the passion again. Remove the coercion, find the desire.
31/1/05
Frances shows a typical metamorphic self-dynamic in the narrative. She has a naïve old self, loses the
self during the trapped period as her autonomous being is fatally compromised to the point of losing all
character. Hew new self is a mixture of recontacting the old self but integrating into a new, different
being who is more realistic, less confident and more aware of the dark possibilities within her. It is a
transcend and include movement – a systems view might get to the heart of this, I can envisage a
diagram of concentric rings.
31.1.05
Frances does try to leave Pete several times, tries to escape from the controlling force of the
relationship and the drug-dealing, but tries and fails several times before finally escaping. This is also
true of Mary who tries to escape from law a number of times before finally managing to make the
severance.
31.01.05
Guilt is an omnipresent emotion in the crises so far. Perhaps this is because when the liberation starts
the social imperative that is transgressed is still in place.
Gemma memos
4/02/05
Gemma’s narrative moves from a number of phrases that denote her as object, and as a
passive object in the narrative, to the active agent. The crisis is all about agency.
4/02/05
The language that Gemma uses to refer to herself in the first part of the narrative, pre-crisis,
portrays herself as a malleable, passive object, whose goals are not derived from her own
desires, and whose main concern, following her parents, is with impression, not expression.
The first order code of ‘empty self’ refers to this vacuum of authentic character. Passivity
manifests in being ‘nice’ and ‘accepting’ at the expense of strong willed or authentic. Goals
are introjected – they are societal roles and expectations, not personal aspirations, and this is
coded by ‘do as others do’. Passive malleability is a key part of the narrative, in its stark
contrast with the expressive and agentic language she uses to describe herself post-crisis.
5/02/05
A key theme in building an explanatory and historical context for the crisis episode is the
repressive and controlling influence of Gemma’s parents right up until the crisis itself.
Gemma hid and concealed her feelings, her authentic self, and her desires, in response to
parental control and their desire for conformity
5/02/05
Gemma describes the ‘smooth transition’ from being her parent’s daughter to her husband’s
wife, all the while playing roles. This is in stark contrast from the shift that constitutes the
crisis, which is anything but.
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