ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic assessment of the personalities of young adults implies the study of certain intrapsychic states which are taken up in this chapter in terms of clinical and developmental issues (Rapaport and Gill, 1959). Assessment of young adults by the psychoanalytic method must, first of all, take into account how well any individual has succeeded in negotiating and working through the phase-specific tasks and conflicts associated with late adolescence (Spiegel, 1961; Adatto, 1980), and by inference all previous phases of development (Blos, 1962). Transition from late adolescence to young adulthood (Eisenstadt, 1956; Block with N. Haan, 1971; Vaillant, 1977; Levinson, Arrow, Klein, Levinson, and McGee, 1978; Arnstein, 1989) may be a relatively continuous, unconflicted growth process (Offer and Offer, 1975), or mark identity achievement status (Marcia, 1980; Holland, 1985; Josselson, 1989). My clinical experience with late adolescents and young adults suggests that most, if not all, are concerned with phase specific tasks, which often become involved in conflict that in turn produces clinically observable symptoms. It is true my clinical observations are 2derived from a skewed patient population, but my observation of nonpatient populations (including my children, those of my colleagues, and close friends) is that similar issues arise in nonclinical instances with more or less frequent if transient symptom formation.
