From Late Adolescence to Young Adulthood

David Dean Brockman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429914157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

'By focusing on the transition from late adolescence to young adulthood, this innovative book makes a unique and valuable contribution to our understanding of a neglected area of development. Drawing on his extensive clinical experience with this age group as well as his understanding of the complex cultural and social forces that impinge on young people today, Brockman has produced that rarest of volumes: a work that is engaging, creative and wise while at the same time being eminently practical and useful. Addressing issues that are highly relevant to our older patients as well as our younger ones, this landmark book should be required reading for every mental health professional.'- Theodore J. Jacobs, M.D.'Dr. Brockman takes us to unexplored terrain. His is a journey to a place where most of us have lived but never really investigated: our life from age 20 to the early 30s. It is always a pleasant surprise to look at something which has been so familiar and now is seen in a new light.

Chapter 1

The Psychoanalytic Assessment of Young Adults

Psychoanalytic assessment of the personalities of young adults implies the study of certain intrapsychic states which are taken up in this chapter in terms of clinical and developmental issues (Rapaport and Gill, 1959). Assessment of young adults by the psychoanalytic method must, first of all, take into account how well any individual has succeeded in negotiating and working through the phase-specific tasks and conflicts associated with late adolescence (Spiegel, 1961; Adatto, 1980), and by inference all previous phases of development (Blos, 1962). Transition from late adolescence to young adulthood (Eisenstadt, 1956; Block with N. Haan, 1971; Vaillant, 1977; Levinson, Arrow, Klein, Levinson, and McGee, 1978; Arnstein, 1989) may be a relatively continuous, unconflicted growth process (Offer and Offer, 1975), or mark identity achievement status (Marcia, 1980; Holland, 1985; Josselson, 1989). My clinical experience with late adolescents and young adults suggests that most, if not all, are concerned with phase specific tasks, which often become involved in conflict that in turn produces clinically observable symptoms. It is true my clinical observations are derived from a skewed patient population, but my observation of nonpatient populations (including my children, those of my colleagues, and close friends) is that similar issues arise in nonclinical instances with more or less frequent if transient symptom formation.

Those individuals without serious symptomatology obviously do not seek therapy and work out their issues more or less independently or else maintain a relatively uneasy equilibrium.

Clinical vignettes are included, where appropriate, to amplify the concepts related to the young adult. In order to proceed in an orderly way to outline and fill out a credible psychoanalytic assessment of young men and women, I shall survey some of those areas of personality functioning that are important for understanding this developmental phase. This is the period of life following college for some, graduate school for others, and for those entering the job market directly out of high school. It is the time for marriage and starting a family, for entering a profession, building a career, and a “settling down” into recognizable patterns of behavior. All these developments are a result of the successful integration or resolution of the tasks of the adolescent phase, especially the late adolescent phase.

Early on, Fountain (1961) singled out five qualities of college students that undergo change as they mature: intensity and volatility of emotion, need for immediate gratification, ineffective reality testing, failures in self-criticism, and an egocentric view of the world. These qualities change at different rates, but as Fountain points out, in general, egocentrism gives way to a more global view of the world, and the young adult relates to other people as having rights and privileges distinct from his or her own. Emotions are more modulated and are put into the service of enhancing relationships. Normally, the adolescent personality as it traverses into young adulthood undergoes a consolidation process, and part of that process is characterized by certain transitional phenomena (Connell and Furman, 1984). These transitional phenomena may consist of manifest or latent variables that are specific for late adolescence: (1) adult sexual object choice; (2) consolidation of sexual and gender identities; (3) expansion of ego functions which become less concerned with conflict (Hartmann, 1950, 1952, 1955, 1958) resulting in: (4) the freeing up of energies for creative and productive work in a chosen vocation; (5) the development of more intimate object relations and less involvement with narcissistic relations with others, peers as well as younger and older persons; (6) significant restructuring of the superego and ego ideal (Hartmann and Loewenstein, 1962; Jacobson, 1964; Kernberg, 1975, 1987; Chused, 1987a,b, 1988); (7) a firm harmonious consolidation of the structures that will compose the young adult personality or character; and (8) preparations for parenthood (Benedek, 1959, 1970). Some of these structures, for purposes of elaboration, are considered to be enhanced versions or transformations of previously formed and enduring or stable aspects of personality functioning. One must always remember that in any young adult there are unresolved residues or fixations from previous developmental phases, and the potential for regressive response to developmental crises must be assessed. Newly formed structures appear at this time as progressive contributions to the young adult’s character, but are often the most vulnerable to regressive change. The young adult’s idealization of the analyst contributes to developmental progression as a transitional phenomenon (Chused, 1987b),Wolf, Gedo, and Terman (1972), from a self psychological standpoint, viewed the transformation of the self as the major task of adolescence. One of the dangers encountered at this time is an increased vulnerability of and failures in cohesion of the self when parental selfobjects are deidealized. Wolf (1982) has observed this task to be a continuous effort over the life cycle.

The clinical assessment of the adolescent and late adolescent personality has been considered from many perspectives. For example, in terms of ego functioning (Freud, 1923; Schlessinger and Robbins, 1983); identity formation (Erikson, 1958, 1968, 1969); personal autonomy (Richmond and Sklansky, 1984); object choice (Blos 1979); separation-individuation (Blos, 1967; Mahler, 1969; Isay, 1980); capacities for love and work (attributed to Freud by Erikson [1950, p. 229]); or play (Alexander, 1958); freedom to be uniquely creative (Jacques, 1980); and to be ordinarily productive or in a related way the capacity to observe and appreciate beauty in nature and the arts; varying degrees of resolution of the Oedipus complex; transformations of infantile narcissism (Kohut, 1966); cognitive capacities for abstract or formal thinking (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958; Dulit, 1972, 1983; Brockman, 1984) as well as the accretion of other new cognitive skills; expansion of social and linguistic skills; ethical and moral development in terms of an expanded superego (Hartmann and Loewenstein, 1962; Kernberg, 1987); and finally an increased capacity for tolerance of frustration, anxiety, and depression (Zetzel, 1965; Schlessinger and Robbins, 1983). In regard to this impressive array of assessment tools, it is remarkable that a definitive study of the personality of young adults has been relatively neglected in the psychoanalytic literature.

Among the many developmental transformations of late adolescence noted above and enumerated by Gould (1978, 1987) would be consolidation of the personality, diversion of energies to mastery of the drives, and successful manipulation of external reality. When these tasks have been successfully negotiated, it is possible to speak of a mature young adult personality. In contrast, pseudomaturity is a forced or premature development that has been stimulated by steady unrelenting pressures from a traumatic environment or the more catastrophic conditions of a death in the family, the tragedy of a divorce in the family, job loss, being passed over for advancement, or failure to gain admission to graduate or professional school. Even more dramatic in this regard are the precocious developments brought on by sobering war experiences. Most often, however, across various cultures there are the gradual and quietly imperceptible changes of growing up into adulthood under more ordinary conditions that family and friends hardly notice until some external event exposes those functionally operative adult qualities and characteristics.

Impulsiveness so common in adolescence gives way to more considered thinking and delayed action. Similarly, the impact of socialization processes becomes visible when called on by life experience, such as the responsible roles of citizen and procreator. Normal young parents, for example, relatively easily assume responsibility for their children, or in a more dramatic way, young nurses and doctors in hospital emergency rooms make life and death decisions in rapid succession.

Another example involves the political activists of the 1960s whose behavior then was characterized by militant street marches, sit-ins at university administration buildings, and antiwar demonstrations. These same individuals are seen now to have transformed their social responsibilities to professional areas while retaining a sharpened social consciousness (lawyers, doctors, homemakers, ministers, teachers, accountants, members of Congress, and entrepreneurial businesspeople). They were not so “co-opted” by the system as they had earlier feared, but the inexorable identification and socialization processes left significant developmental incremental changes in their wake.

The study of these growth processes which we are considering in developmental language, comes from the various disciplines of sociology, life-span developmental psychology research, psychoanalytic reconstruction in the analyses of adults, direct observations of, and here in this work, psychoanalytic therapy with young adults. The language of the processes associated with the acquisition of various roles (e.g., citizen, procreator, creator, and provider) comes from the sociologists, and from psychoanalysis comes the observation and concept of internalization of qualities and characteristics that compose the consolidated personality (Schafer, 1968). For all students of human development it is important to learn from a wide variety of disciplines, in order to approach a greater understanding of these very complex processes. The psychotherapeutic process also promotes the socialization of patients (Orne and Wender, 1968).

Developmental processes and socialization processes impact on young people simultaneously and are studied and described by researchers from these two different disciplines. Development occurs over the entire course of life, and developmental changes reflect biological, social, psychological, physical, and historical issues. Biological issues also imply evolutionary assumptions. Mulitvariables interact and have a cumulative effect (Featherman, 1983). While some of the same language is used, the conceptualizations are very different and thus lead to divergent explanations and conclusions. As yet, there has not been enough serious effort to integrate this growing body of knowledge. Solnit (1983) joins Bell (1968) and Peters (1985) in pointing out the healthy effects of siblings on other siblings and of siblings on parents to enhance their respective capacities to confront and resolve interpersonal, intrapsychic, and various developmental hurdles and conflicts. Macooby (1984) insists on a bidirectional process in which parents have to change and adapt to the needs and personalities of their children. For example, one father reported that he was brought up short when his seemingly innocent command to an 11-year- old daughter was met by her response that she was “the boss of herself.” Mutual attachments, identifications, and empathic resonances occur in the natural environment of a family. Companionship, rivalries, envy, jealousy, hatred, and reassurances contribute, Solnit (1983) says, to growth in constructive capacities for tolerance, regulation of tension, anticipation, planning, and adaptation.

Offer and Offer in their book From Teenage to Young Manhood(1975), describe three different pathways to adulthood: continuous growth, surgent growth, and tumultuous growth. These developmental routes were abstracted from survey tests and interviews with a homogenous group of young suburban men who were studied over a period of eight years. This study was more sociological than in-depth psychoanalytic psychology, even though brief interviews lend some clinical credibility and validity to the study. Their conclusion that inner turmoil is not a regular or necessary ingredient of the adolescent phase, in my opinion, is open to question when in-depth assessment almost invariably reveals the presence of inner conflicts (A. Freud, 1936; Blos, 1962). The experienced psychoanalytic clinician is forced to question the concept of continuous growth without conflict or symptoms. It seems a reasonable conclusion that some discontinuity and regression with symptom formation must be at the very least common in most individuals.

Emde (1985) also calls for integration of psychological data with sociological data in studying the progression from adolescence to adulthood. His emphasis is on the “transactional self,” which develops out of the interaction with the social environment. He refers to the well-known example of marriage partners who successfully navigate the hazardous waters of adult intimacy by negotiation and other interactive patterns. These are daily issues that arise between marriage partners; for example, over their respective careers, how finances are managed, how leisure time is spent, or gratification of sexual desires. These are the multiform interactions with children of various ages who are involved in their own phase specific conflicts, which in turn induce destabilizing regressive reactivations of the parents’ own childhood conflicts.

Sociological studies show that the middle class is fragmenting and is no longer so homogenous, and one of the reasons for this fragmentation process is attributed to the high rate of divorce in American families. In addition, families are dislocated from their families of origin, thereby losing important social support systems, and there are often no grandparents nearby to assist the young parents in processing their developmental tasks as young adults. Today there seem to be fewer young radicals or “anticonformists” who follow their own individualistic paths as described some years ago by Kenniston (1965, 1968) and the number of politically uncommitted seems to be larger—the reverse of the number of just a few decades ago. Even though another wave (though scattered and episodic) of student rebellion and public protest seems to be taking place again, the sociological scene of youth today is that they are more studious and too serious about their careers to enter into political activities that take away from their studies (Galatzer-Levy and Cohler, 1993). This is a sad commentary since it is to be deplored that so many young people who have the vote do not use it.

The internal psychological conditions that permit, facilitate, and ensure the dominance of the principles of continuity (Lichtenberg, 1984; Emde and Harmon, 1986) over discontinuity are part of what I want to emphasize in this chapter. What is meant by dominance of continuity is that development is considered to be a dynamic process of progressive and regressive movements, which in the optimal sense, proceed among a variety of possibilities toward adult or genital character formation. The genital character, as Reich (1949) originally described it, is the sum total of various developmental achievements. These include decathexis of the Oedipus complex and mastery of castration anxiety as manifested by the free capacity for orgastic discharge of sexual tension within which there has been integration of pregenital drives and the unfettered use of sublimation which allows for increased capacities for work and play. Reich’s concept of the genital character was a good beginning in describing the composition of the young adult personality.

Freud (1905) in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality refers to normal sexual life as arising in a “convergence of the affectionate current and the sensual current, both being directed towards the sexual object and sexual aim” (p. 207). The last phase of sexual development according to Freud is when sexual aims are subordinated in the service of reproduction. However, it is not at all clear that the sole pathway to adult object love requires becoming a parent. In fact, there are many persons who remain single or childless and must be considered adult in every sense of the word. Yet another way of looking at the problem of deciding who is an adult is to conceptualize a variety of adult behaviors as derived from clinical observations. Abraham (1925) regarded a person’s chara...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1  Psychoanalytic Assessment of Young Adults
• Chapter 2  Identity
• Chapter 3  Gender and Sexual Identity
• Chapter 4  Intimacy
• Chapter 5  The Fate of Don Juan: The Myth and the Man
• Chapter 6  The Power Motive in Late Adolescence and Young Adulthood
• Chapter 7  Narcissistic Rage in Young Adulthood: The Tragedy of Akhilleus
• Chapter 8  Creativity in the Young Adult: A Partial Review and a Critique
• Chapter 9  Summary and Conclusions
• Name Index
• Subject Index