Arrested Development

Default individualization is a path which someone can follow by accepting personally bounding identities which are socially accepted. Basically each person accepting the same identity of that of the person right next to them. By not being their own individual, these identities may possibly delay growth into adulthood. Things in life happen by default for these people, whatever happens just happens, and it is not planned out or thought of to any extent. This individualization does not stimulate growth as a person, because one can just look onto others (whose are actions, choices, and behaviors are socially accepted) to choose their life choices. Or someone can choose a path of developmental individualization. They can easily have their own personal identity apart and different from any others. People can actively have a well thought out plan to change your life for the better and to maintain this plan for life improvement in the adult world

As times have changed, so has our culture. Our country tends to veer children towards one particular individualization over another. It seems developmental individualization is more common. People have expectations by society which they must fulfill, and are expected to do so at particular times in their lives, as said by Tamara Haraven who argues the importance of “… the timing of transitions, with those to adulthood becoming more uniform and orderly.” People are expected in life to go to school, work, get married, start a family, all these things are expected to be done at a certain time in their life. People may not want to do all this in this order and whatever point in their life, but they do because they are expected to do so. This is all supposed to happen developmentally. People are molded by society, actively making decisions and trying to be ahead of life’s obstacles. This is occurring in not only America but as well as in Europe, as Wallace observes how instead of becoming their own individual people, people “choose identities from among and increasingly complex array of options”. Sven Morch makes similar observations, on youths who must ‘master’ their adolescence ‘ways’ in order to become successful adults, showing the importance of structure to their culture. Life must be followed in a particular sequence according to ‘contemporary capitalism’ in order to succeed in life. With a million and one people trying to get the same task done, people do things because they have to, not because they want to. However, these people are actively making decisions to plan out their own paths, and this makes them developmentally individualized.

Many aspects of our society add to the openness of selfishness of people and personality disorders. It is obvious in an argument of Bly that our culture has condition contemporary society to become narcissistic, which has also been argued to be correlated to arrested adulthood;

“ As Bly argues, the sibling society gives people the permission to be narcissists, to remain as half-adults, and to engage in complex forms of sibling rivalry wherein they demand what they feel they are entitled to from an “authority” they have learned to hate…”

The elite class (famous people especially) who in their own way seem to have molded our culture, have secluded themselves from the less fortunate and created much distaste among people of lower classes, by having personal trainers, makeup artists, plastic surgeons, and nutritionists they make themselves look like the perfect person. By this, causing hostility between classes has caused many to dream for better only to realize they can not rise up from their current social class. By trying to achieve the perfect image, and be something they are not many unhealthy issues arise. Young women watching Brittany Spears on television, idolizing her begin to obsess about her perfectly flat abs, and run to the bathroom after each meal or starve themselves instead. Our culture values beauty and youth, and promotes unrealistic lifestyles. It is well explained by Cote and by others how people constantly look to others and make comparisons;

“Schnall goes on to connect these problems with the rise of Riesman’s other directed person. She notes that in contrast to the inner-directed person, the other-directed person