DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

considered to be a constructive part of the developmental process, for example Gail
Sheehy wrote:
“If I’ve been convinced by one idea in the course of collecting all the life stories that
inform the book, it is this: times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not
only predictable but desirable. They mean growth.” (Sheehy, 1977, p.31)
Researching this literature led me away from a consideration of physical illness,
which has a large amount of empirical research attached to it, towards developmental
crisis, which does not. I could find no satisfactory answer in the literature to why
crisis may have a transformative effect, or lead to growth. Extant literature suggested
that this change occurred in the cognitive self, such as in enhanced self-understanding,
or a greater sense of self-confidence and self-efficacy. This then led to a deep and
extensive review of the literature on the self, as it is dealt with in social psychology
(e.g. Markus, 1980), in humanistic theory (e.g. Rogers, 1961) and in social cognitive
theory (e.g. Bandura, 1978).
It was clear there was a lack of empirical work on the processes of crisis, with
a particular paucity of research on crisis occurring in the 20-40 age band of “early
adulthood” (Levinson, 1978). There is almost nothing to be found on the nature and
processes of crisis in this age group since Levinson’s work in the 1970s. I therefore
settled upon studying the nature and developmental repercussions of crisis in early
adulthood, in order to fill this perceived niche.
During the process of data collection and analysis of the data in the thesis,
several new theoretical constructs were brought in to help interpret aspects of the data
that did not seem to be comprehensible within the scope of the original literature
review. These new constructs were the persona (or false self), materialism and
intrinsic/extrinsic orientation. Rather than incorporate these later developments into
Chapter’s 2 literature review and so imply that they were a priori constructs, they are
introduced in the thesis during the discussions of Chapters 6, 7 and 8, in order to
emphasise to the reader that it was the emerging data that suggested their inclusion,
rather than their presence shaping the data from the outset.
1.2 Methodological Developments
While my theoretical ideas and research questions were developing, my
methodological ideas were developing too. I had been intending a qualitative project
from the start, as I had been working as a qualitative researcher in the commercial
2