DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

5/02/05
As the crisis progresses, Gemma continues to search externally for a cause to her suffering,
and this is the ‘continued external search’. This is followed by ‘assertiveness and expression’
which is a key phase of opening to begins to become more aware of inner feelings and her
own desires. This is a prelude to the release of the pressure valve…
6/02/05
Gemma, despite some resistance, goes and sees a counsellor. This is a major turning point – a
release of emotion, thoughts, concerns and a surfacing of the inner self. At this point, there is a
sense of quest, journey, path, in the narrative, which suggests that the release moment releases
something fluid and open-ended, rather than something static and pre-constructed.
6/02/05
Gemma separates, liberates, and encounters the full range of emotions from terrible guilt to
excitement to fear. There seems to be an interesting co-occurrence of positive and negative
emotions..
Mary Memos
11.05.2005
A key opening part of the narrative is about how Mary came to choose law as a profession.
‘Law’ later in the narrative becomes the bond from which she must set herself free.
11.05.2005
The contextual environment in which the crisis unfolds is described here – secure,
competitive and all-subsuming
The crisis is a long time in coming – the final pressure build up and release is the culmination
of at least five years of doubt about her life and lifestyle. The realisation of possibility of
separation is a realisation of possibility within herself – the change is away from the rigidity of
her self-concept toward one in which possibility and alternatives could manifest.
12.05.2005
Memo: Mary’s Fairground Ride
It was telling that during the emotional period just after separation, Mary finds that it is a small child
playing on a fairground ride who acts a teacher. She relays the following story:
“There was a family staying with me, and there was a 12 year old who was crazy to go on a
fairground ride here, I don’t know whether you know, but it goes faster and faster and faster
and it tips up, and there is nothing to stop you falling in apart from the centrifugal force, and I
would never ever normally have gone on anything like that, I hate those rides, terrified of
them. She was desperate to go on the ride, I was still feeling this minute to minute terror, and
I thought there is nothing to be afraid of, anything to fill a minute will be fantastic, so off I
went on this ride and loved it with this girl and of course loved every minute of it – a fantastic
filling of those minutes with huge adrenalin. She and I, like two junkies, went on this
ridiculous fairground ride again and again. She was another person who really helped me out
– her desire to go on this was in fact my saving grace.” (p.7-8)
It doesn’t seem like a huge hermeutic leap from this story to suggest that what Mary was trying to find
again upon leaving her job is what children spontaneously have – the ability to just be, and
correspondingly the ability to just be yourself, rather than the frenetic need to prove self all the time.
Rachel Memos
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