The Importance of Friends (& Possibly Lovers?)

i'm doing an educational psychology assignment now and it involves analysing a teenager/adolescent (I interviewed last month during my one week "School Experience") in terms of his/her psychological development and formation of what we call a "self concept".

in my research, i found this bunch of findings by this guy called Erik Erikson, who says (among many other things) that the period of "early adulthood (approximately 18 years old to 35 years old", which is actually Stage 6 (Intimacy vs. Isolation) of his 8-stage theory, is critical for developing "true and intimate relationships" and the virtue of "Love". This is presumably the stage that most of us are in now...

It is not meant to be limited to romantic, sexualized relationships, but friendships as well. He describes that it is necessary to "drop ego-boundaries" in this process in order to "resolve any crisis" that we experience at this stage (note that crisis/conflict resolution is critical for mastering each stage as well). He also says that it is "vital to this phase that a solid sense of identity precede it" - which means that the individual should have developed/established an amount of "certainty" regarding his or her identity in the previous stage (i.e. Stage 5) before he/she can successfully "navigate" this phase..

However, what is most critical about his theory is that, according to Erikson, "those who are unable to achieve this (i.e. those who never know this intimacy", in this stage of their lives, will develop a sense of isolation and self-absorption and tend to avoid relationships with others and make commitments!

Worse still, failure in this phase may lead to "Schizoid Personality"!!!

grrr... make friends! make lovers!