Case Presentation Anne is a 22-year-old Caucasian female currently enrolled in college.
She is enrolled as a full time student majoring in Criminal Justice. She lives in a single room on campus and is three hours away from her family. She is currently in the Later Adolescence stage of development and is dealing with several different life issues. During the previous life stage, Early Adolescence, several developmental tasks had to be dealt with by the subject.
While physical maturation was going on Anne had problems with severe acne and had no real growth spurt. To this day she remains only five feet tall. Her development of formal operations came at a normal rate for adolescence. However, during these years her emotional development led to a bout of depression.
She did not have many friends and would therefore sit home only many nights. This lead to difficulty finding a peer group to fit into. Once she found a group of friends to join she started dating. Anne became sexually involved with her first boyfriend and became pregnant.
She decided that it would be best to terminate the pregnancy and continue on with school. The psychosocial crisis for this life stage is group identity versus alienation. Anne started this stage alienated from society. She did not have any real friends and was often by herself.
Toward the end of this stage she began to identify with a group a people who became her friends. Because she had been alienated from society previously she fell prey to peer pressure in order to remain a member of the group. She was pressured into having sex, which led to the pregnancy. All of these factors led to the core pathology of dissociation.
She has trouble keeping friends and is not completely comfortable dating. Currently Anne is in the Later Adolescence stage of development. She is learning to be out on her own for the first time in her life. Because she is away at school she does not have the guidance that her parents once gave her.
She has to make decisions about her life and life choices. So far she has not had much success in making these choices. She almost decided to quit school and move in with her boyfriend. This poor planning has left her very behind in school making her have to attend for an extra year in order to graduate.
She also decided that it was all right to smoke marijuana. This led to problems with the law, which is not good considering that she is a criminal justice major. Next year she will be moving into an apartment and will have to work in order to support herself. This is another step toward autonomy from her parents.
Anne is figuring out the different aspects of her gender identity. She is taking on new life roles everyday. She must balance her time between being a student, friend, co-worker, lover, all the while making the transition from child to adult. She has been having trouble making the transition from childhood to adulthood.
After high school she was holding on to her childhood for dear life but now is learning how to let go and move on. Now that she is on her own Anne must make decisions about what she feels are her values and morals. She is now deciding what she feels is right and what is wrong. Anne is finding out what causes she wants to support and what she wants to fight against.
She is becoming aware of the fact that there are consequences for every one of her actions. She has decided that it is no longer a good idea to do drugs and party every night because it affects her studies. The last of the developmental tasks that she must deal with is finding a career. She decided that after high school she wanted to continue her education and go on to college.
Anne was originally a Biology major but found that she preferred Criminal Justice instead. Anne is taking steps toward graduation and building a resume in order to find a job in the future. She is now taking her studies seriously to insure that she will graduate. She feels that her diploma will help her to find a decent paying job with which she will be able to support herself and her family.
The Psychosocial Crisis for this life stage is individual identity versus identity confusion. This is a difficult process because she must pull together all the different aspects of her life up to this point and figure out exactly what type of person she has become. The other end of the spectrum is when a person is unable to commit to what type of person he/she really is. Anne is able to see her good points and her bad points and bring them together to form a whole person.
Role experimentation is the Central Process for later adolescence. The Central Process is tied in with the Developmental Task of gender identification. Anne is in a period of experimentation where she is free to move from role to role before making any final decisions about her life. She is using more of a diffuse-avoidance method to make all of her life choices.
She has a low level of exploration and a low level of commitment. Her ethnic identity takes on the form of articulation and awareness. She has combined her own beliefs with those of society to form her own unique person. The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality is fidelity, while the Core Pathology is repudiation.
Anne is moving more toward the Prime Adaptive Ego Quality of fidelity. She is ready to be in a committed relationship and get married. At this point in her life if she were to get pregnant again she would keep the baby and make a life for themselves. She is prepared to give herself to someone else.
I believe that Anne is prepared to deal with whatever life has to offer. When she reaches early adulthood she will not have any problems with the Psychosocial Crisis of intimacy versus isolation. I also feel that she will choose the Prime Adaptive Ego Quality of love over the Core Pathology of exclusivity. Overall Anne is developing normally and will continue on the right path from now on.
