THE URGE FOR INDEPENDENCE: BECOMING ONE’S OWN MAN
At mid-life this feeling of being constrained within the corporate structure, which Sam Greenawalt complains about, is normal and natural. Having outgrown certain dependency needs that they once had for the security of a paternal organization, many men begin to yearn or a new kind of independence.
Such yearnings are so common that the Yale group call this the BOOM period, a time of Becoming One’s Own Man. Not a separate life stage, it is actually a peaking of the “settling down” period and generally occurs in the middle to late thirties. A key element in this period is a man’s feeling that no matter how successful he has been thus far, he is not sufficiently his own man.
This new urge for independence usually comes as a surprise. One of the myths of our culture is that people are finished with the business of growing up in their twenties. However, this expectation ignores the fact that the life structure created in early adulthood cannot possibly reflect all parts of the self—and must therefore be enlarged later.
Another reason why this life structure must change is that it is based, to some degree, on illusions. One common illusion in the early thirties, for example, is for a man to regard himself as highly autonomous because he is now making his own way and his parents are no longer telling him what to do. In fact, however, his ambitions and goals are very much tied to what the Yale group call “tribal influences”—the institutions and groups that are important to him. And, despite being free from parental influence, he is likely to have found other authority figures to guide and protect him.
During the BOOM period a man finally begins to realize that he is not really as independent as he once imagined. He now craves more authority and wants to speak with his own voice. He also feels uncomfortably dependent on those with power over him. The writer feels unduly intimidated by his critics or publisher; the middle manager thinks his superiors control too much, and delegate too little; and the professional man chafes under senior colleagues.
This is the time when many men feel compelled to leave the corporate organization and strike out on their own, a desire that, as we shall sec later, often leads to a second career. This same sense of being constrained can spread to other areas as well, however. And the man who now begins to resent his boss may also start complaining that his wife treats him like a little boy.
Breaking with a mentor is an extremely significant event during this period, the Yale group discovered. The person who was formerly so loved and admired, and seen as giving so much, is now felt to be heavily controlling. The mentor begins to appear to the younger man like a tyrannical and egocentric father, rather than as someone who fosters independence and individuality. Because the relationship has served its purpose, however, it can now be terminated—sometimes slowly and peacefully, sometimes abruptly and bitterly. After the separation a process of internalization occurs, whereby the younger man’s personality is enriched as he makes the valued qualities of the mentor more fully a part of himself.
Having dispensed with this tie, a man is ready to BOOM: He is ready to give up being a son in the little-boy sense, and a young man in the apprentice sense. He is ready to assume more fully himself the responsibility of being a mentor, father, and friend to other adults. This sort of developmental achievement is the essence of adulthood, say the Yale group.
Relationships of this kind are also necessary to work through Erikson’s stage of generativity vs. stagnation. The issue now is caring for future generations. A man cannot get very far with this task before forty, say the Yale group, but his breaking off with former mentors is the beginning. (They caution, however, that it is probably impossible to become a mentor without first having had one. The presence or absence of mentors was found to be of great importance during the twenties and thirties; and the absence of a mentor is often associated with developmental impairments at mid-life.)
This BOOM time marks the end of a man’s battle to conquer his external environment, and sets the stage for the in; ternal struggle of the mid-life crisis.
*51\93\2*
