This research examines the subject of abuse of street drugs by young adults. The research will set forth the topic in the context of life-span developmental psychology and then discuss the variety of impacts that young-adult drug abuse may have on optimal development, with a view toward identifying psychosocial issue fronts that the phenomenon may present in the practice of counseling.
Focus on the context in which the human psyche emerges, including the social and personal relationships that it encounters, is the starting point of analysis in developmental psychology. The traditional assumption is that human psychology has universality by reason of "central processing mechanism" and that there is "a fundamental division" between that mechanism and the "context," or external environment in which the psyche is made to function (Shweder, 1990, p. 5). Human development does not discard the individual central processing mechanism but also does not valorize it. Rather, context per se is the point of analytical departure.
According to Erik Erikson, an individual experiences stages of psychosocial development based on successive crises of ego development that are successfully or unsuccessfully navigated, according as individuals appropriately identify with or liberate themselves from external influences (society, family). Erikson (1968, 1980) puts young adulthood between the ages of 18 and 30, a stage of cognitive and ego development at which the personal focus is on forming relationships, both personal and social. Implicit in Erikson's discussion of the development of ego is the issue of one's sense of place in the world as a social being.
Erikson sees adolescence as the pivotal stage of development because it is the stage at which the individual is undergoing permanent physical changes while also being decisively engaged in both ego formation and extending the self into the social realm. Other psychological theorists (e.g., Piaget...