This is how they described the stage (Wikipedia):
I haven't read the book, but I came across the title again (after not having thought about it for years) in an article about Beyonce in In These Times. The article looks at how Beyonce is not navigating this stage very well:Characteristics of this crisis are:
- feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at his/her academic/intellectual level
- frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career
- confusion of identity
- insecurity regarding the near future
- insecurity regarding present accomplishments
- re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
- disappointment with one's job
- nostalgia for university or college life
- tendency to hold stronger opinions
- boredom with social interactions
- financially-rooted stress
- loneliness
- desire to have children
This virgin-to-Madonna routine has played out with other teen-to-woman pop stars: Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears. It’s sad to see Beyoncé giving in to these hypersexual—and hypercommercial—images. Gone is the clever champion for “independent women” or “survivors,” that some of her earlier songs portrayed, replaced with the submissive female selling sex.The article is pretty on-target, and it mentions the quarter-life crisis as an explanation for what Beyonce is going through.
When I read the article, I thought back to some things Ken Wilber said in the Kosmic Consciousness CD set -- that between the end of adolescence and the onset of midlife, most people do not change at all in a developmental sense. I didn't buy into this when I first heard it, and I buy it even less now.
Erik Erickson was the first theorist that I know about (there were probably others) to look at the development of identity throughout the lifespan. In Identity and the Life Cycle, Erickson identified stages from birth through old age. The stage the immediately following puberty/adolescence was termed "genitality," which suggests the conflict of ego versus instinct, but is described as intimacy versus isolation.
This looks very similar to the quarter-life crisis that Wilner and Robbins talked about in their book and that was also described by Damian Barr in Get It Together: A Guide to Surviving your Quarterlife Crisis (UK). Erickson's theory is clearly Freudian in its approach, and is therefore focused on issues of sexuality. But these same issues would seem to appear in the other developmental lines as well.
- Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
Body and ego must be masters of organ modes and of the other nuclear conflicts in order to face the fear of ego loss in situations which call for self-abandon. The avoidance of these experiences leads to isolation and self-absorption. The counterpart of intimacy is distantiation, which is the readiness to isolate and destroy forces and people whose essence seems dangerous to one's own. Now true genitality can fully develop. The danger at this stage is isolation, which can lead to severe character problems.
- Central Task: Caregiving
- Positive Outcome: Form close relationships and share with others
- Ego Quality: Love
- Definition: Capacity for mutuality that transcends childhood dependency
- Developmental Task: Stable relationships; Child bearing; Work etc.
- Significant Relations: Marital partner, friends.
Erikson's listed criteria for "genital utopia" illustrate his insistence on the role of many modes and modalities in harmony:
- mutuality of orgasm
- with a loved partner
- of opposite sex
- with whom one is willing and able to share a trust, and
- with whom one is willing and able to regulate the cycles of work, procreation, and recreation
- so as to secure to the offspring all the stages of satisfactory development
Strangely enough, even astrology acknowledges something they call the "Saturn return," which hits in the late 20's. Here is how this concept is described in Wikipedia:
Saturn is symbolically/astrologically associated with time, challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness, heaviness, and hard lessons, among other more positive things such as structure, significance, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, and order -- this is why astrologers believe that the thirtieth birthday is such a major rite of passage and is considered by many astrologers to mark the "true beginning" of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, responsibility, ambition, and full maturation.I certainly don't put stock in anything that comes from astrology, but if even they see this period of life as a crucial developmental stage, there must be more here than a mere concept.
I would love to be able to provide my own experience of this period as an example, but to be brutally honest, I was drunk for most of my 20's so I am not the person to ask. Based on what has been written about this stage, I simply delayed having to deal with it by staying wakefully unconscious for those years of my life.
If anyone reading this has any thoughts on this stage of development, I'd like to hear what you think about any of this -- whether you experienced the "crisis" described here, or have any memory of what that period was like.
If there is a developmental stage most people pass through in their twenties, Wilber will have to rethink some aspects of his developmental model.
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Hi, I came across your entry while looking for resources on the quarter-life crisis. They are few and far-between.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm going through it right now, so I have no doubt whatsoever that it exists. I find myself going through almost all of the symptomatic feelings listed on the wikipedia entry for the quarter-life crisis.
The more I read about other people's experiences with the quarter life crisis, the more I think college is to blame. I mean, I learned a lot at college, but I learned to think too much, and too much emphasis was placed on thinking. And at the end you're thrown out into the "real world" with no social support (my friends from college are ALL in other cities all over the country), possibly no job skills, (my fault for majoring in English, but they said go with your passion!) and no direction.
It's so overwhelming. And there is this social construction we have of what your twenties is supposed to be like. It's supposed to be wild and fun! We are all supposed to live on the set of Friends, I guess, and when we don't live up to those expectations, when we don't know who we are anymore, or what we want to do or be for the rest of our lives, you get stuck in limbo.
You feel like you're a teenager again, because it's really like having your identity vs. identity confusion all over again.
I think this didn't happen as much when Erikson wrote his theories. I think that those who did go to college mostly got the jobs they wanted out of college and were content. Nowadays we have 1.6 million people graduating from college every year, but only 650,0000 jobs being created that require a college degree. So there is rampant unemployement, underemployement, and because of all these factors, depression. There's a LOT of depression, but we don't even know how much, because there are no statistics on it. One theory is that this age range doesn't have the money for counseling or therapy, so depression in the 20's goes untreated and undocumented. I know in the case of my husband and I it has. We can't scrap two dimes together to pay bills most months, how can we pay for depression meds and counseling?
It's a bleak situation to be in, and I hope things look up for us soon.
You make some very insightful comments and have some good insights regarding the quarter life crisis. However, I think that your criticisms of Ken Wilber on this topic, like the majority of critiques of this author, are based upon not understanding what he means.
ReplyDeleteYour comments that you were drunk for most of your 20's and therefore missed out on this developmental stage actually validates what he is saying that most people in this culture do not undergo a developmental change during these years of early adulthood. It is not that there is not a new stage that is ready to arise during these years, but rather that conditions both external in the society and internal to the individual that often prevent this growth from occurring.
A progressive college-educated American, has typically already reached a postmodern (green) level of development in college, and the next developmental step is to go integral (yellow). This is considerable leap to make, and requires not only the time and energy to explore the conceptual issues of integral theory, but also to do the psychologically intensive work of shadow integration and ego transcendence. Many people do not have the resources or drive to do this in their early adulthoods, and so they stay stuck in confusion and meaninglessness that often accompanies the postmodern level of development. This, in addition to the challenges of establishing oneself as a young adult professionally and financially in our current society, lead to the issues of the quarter-life crisis. I might suggest that someone undergoing a quarter-life crisis also not only explore Ken Wilber's work, but also look into the soul-centric nature based practice for entering true adulthood as described by Bill Plotkin as a means for working through this stage.