Emerging

Emerging Adulthood
Kelley Walker
Psych/600
November 23, 2015
Susanne Beier

Emerging Adulthood
Erickson describes a number of further stages of personality development. In young adulthood, the healthy individual has to achieve the capacity for closeness and intimacy through love, or else suffer a sense of isolation that will permit only shallow human relationships (Berk, 2010). In early middle age, she has to develop a sense of personal creativity that extends beyond her own self. This includes a concern for others, for her work, for the community in which she is part. And towards the end of her life, there is a final crisis during which each person has to come to terms with his or her own life and accept it for what it was, with a sense of integrity, rather than despair.
The term adolescence is derived from the Latin for “growing up.” It is a period of transition in which the individual changes from a child to an adult. Biological maturing ultimately leads to social and economic changes: from dependence on one’s family to ever increasing independence. And of course there are the numerous psychological changes that accompany the process of growing up. These include the progressive maturing of sexual attitudes and behavior that will ultimately allow the adolescent to start his or her own family, and the acquisition of various skills that will eventually enable him or her to become a fully functioning member of adult society. In effect, adolescence is simply a protracted version of what in birds is a rather abrupt procedure, when the fledglings are forced to fly out of the nest and make their own way.
Compared to other animals, humans attain sexual maturity rather late in their development. This is just another fact of an important difference between us and our animal cousins, a lengthened period of immaturity and dependence that provides more