Back in 2001, Abby Wilner and Alexandra Robbins wrote a book called
Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties that looked at the period of life immediately following adolescence, usually ranging from the ages of 21 - 29. It has since become a marginally accepted stage of adult development by many in the mental health field.
This is how they described the stage (
Wikipedia):
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
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:
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.
- 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
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.
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.
Tags:
quarter-life crisis, Erik Erickson, Abby Wilner, Alexandra Robbins, Saturn return, developmental stages, Ken Wilber, Beyonce, Identity and the Life Cycle, genitality, identity
