6/15- Young Adulthood Flashcards
What age range roughly corresponds to “early/young adulthood”?
19-35 yo
What are key themes/characteristics of young adulthood?
- Leaving to having established a personal and vocational “home”
- Self focus to pairing to “generativity”
- Cultural and gender differences
- Significant impact of globalization and diversity
Developmental psychologies of young adulthood (5)?
- Freud: Drives and Conflicts
- Erikson: Psychosocial Development
- Levinson/Colarusso and Nemiroff: Fine Tuning Adult Development
- Vaillant: Predicted for Success
- Kail and Cavanaugh: Early Adulthood/emerging adulthood (cultural/western phenomena, extending role transitions, identity vs. “role diffusion”)
What did Freud study/say about early adulthood?
Drives and Conflicts
- First systematic clinical case studies
- Focus on early childhood to early adulthood and related drives and conflicts
- Goal: to love and to work
(Fairly pessimistic about ability of individual to change much once they reached early adulthood)
What did Erikson say about early adulthood?
Psychosocial Development:
- Individual AND society
- Series of diverging pathways
- Intimacy (and involvement) vs. Isolation (and self-absorption)
- “Distantiation” and differentiation in young adulthood
- Yearning for idealized leader (e.g. possibly why ISIS has such an attractive pull)
- Intimacy is more than sexuality
What did Levinson/Colarusso/Nemiroff say about early adulthood?
“Fine Tuning Adult Development”
- Different terms for early adulthood: entering adulthood, age 30 transition, settling down
- Choosing and learning to negotiate with partners (conflict and choice, establishing patterns of conflict resolution, developing ways to manage disruptions and disputes in partner alliance, decisions about children and parenting, deepened commitments, reevaluates productivity goals with work, children…)
- Picking and working with a mentor (eventually involves individuation/separation from mentor)
What did Valiant say about early adulthood?
- Adaptation to life, Natural history of Alcoholism, Aging Well
- Investigator on Harvard/Grant study following 268 socially advantaged males “predicted for success” well characterized and followed over 70 yrs
What three contrasting study populations did Valiant look at in Aging Well?
- Glueck; disadvantaged inner-city men
- Terman/Stanford: intellectually gifted women (IQ > 140)
- Harvard/Grant: socially advantaged men “predicted for success”
What were the key findings from the 3 populations in Aging Well?
- Surprising degree of adult change
- “Good” relationships facilitate aging
- Healing relationships require gratitude, forgiveness, and “internalization” of the positive loving relationships
- Widening radius vs. isolation
- Advantage of serial sampling
- Alcohol abuse undermines successful aging**
- Learning to play and cultivate new involvements enhances retirement
- “Subjective good health”
- Widening social radius vs. isolation
- Career consolidation (value to self AND society)
- Intimacy: interdependence, reciprocity, commitment, and continuity
- Generativity
**More important than even retirement income as far as outcomes of aging
What did Valiant consider to be elements of a successful “Career”?
- Contentment, compensation, competency, and commitment to social role
- Not necessarily employment
- Requires: hard work, tolerance of imperfections, mature “defenses” (especially humor)
What comprise generativity, “successful grieving” and finding meaning?
- Recovering lost loves
- Vaillant, Verghese, and Souba
- Telling, sharing stories
- Finding a professional AND personal venue
What did Kail and Cavanaugh say about early adulthood?
- Early adulthood/emerging adulthood
- Cultural/Western Phenomena
- Extending role transitions (marriage, careers and gender differences, alcohol and developmental interferences)
- Identity vs. “Role Diffusion”- concerns about identity shifting to concerns about autonomy and relationships?? (lack of identity by mid-30s predicts lifelong pattern of role diffusion)
- Friendships (women and emotional sharing, men and shared activities, competition)
- Love relationships (passion, intimacy, and commitment)
- Abuse: the dark side of relationships
- Cohabitation
- Predictions of “success”
- Alcohol abuse increases risk for other abuse
- Unclear implications of cohabitation
- Negotiation of disputes
What is involved in career consolidation vs. reality shock?
- Good mentors promote: understanding risk, sensitivity to situations, getting credit
- Medicine’s “silent curriculum”
- Alienation and burnout
- Mentoring, mutuality of benefit, need graceful endings
- Nurturing “important moments”
What are some of the conflicts with the internet, social media, and professionalism?
- “Intuitive” vs. “Acquired/Digital Immigrants”
- Evolving data about behavioral changes, communication norms, boundaries
- New connections, new “opportunities”
- Compassion vs. Dehumanization
- Spontaneity vs. Professional Boundaries
- Managing Inaccurate Information
- “Googling Yourself: in Anticipation”
What are some professionalism questions that may arise in early adulthood?
- With patients
- With colleagues
- Rapidly changing norms
- Usual vulnerabilities: money, sex, power
