“fear of commitment” some people seem to exhibit is an example of immaturity in this stage. This fear isn’t always so obvious. Many people today are always putting off the progress of their relationships. Neither should the young adult need to prove him- or herself anymore. A teenage relationship is often a matter of trying to establish identity through “couple-hood” Who am I? I’m his girl friend. The young adult relationship should be a matter of two independent egos wanting to create something larger than themselves. We intuitively recognize this when we frown on a relationship between a young adult and a teenager: We see the potential for manipulation of the younger member of the party by the older. Our society hasn’t done much for young adult, either. The emphasis on careers, the isolation of urban living, the splitting apart of relationships because of our need for mobility, and the general impersonal nature of modern life prevent people from naturally developing their intimate relationships. Erikson calls the maladaptive form promiscuity, referring particularly to the tendency to become intimate too free, too easily, and without any depth to ones intimacy. The malignancy he call exclusion, which refers to the tendency to isolate from love, friendship and community, and to develop a certain hatefulness in compensation for one’s loneliness. If one gets through this stage Erikson believes that one has the psychosocial strength to love. “A human being should be potentially able to accomplish mutuality of genital orgasm, but he should also be so constituted as to bear a certain amount of frustration in the matter without undue regression wherever emotional preference or considerations of duty and loyalty call for it” Erikson left the field of psychology with great achievements he was a great writer a great doctor and a great man. He left behind a great leg...
