ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors identify a second type of crisis mobilized by movement into adult roles in marital families. In certain cases, marital life posed the requirement of differentiation from the mother or from a type of dependence and symbiotic identification modeled after the earliest mother-child relationship. The type of transitional crisis is illustrated by the case of Kate White. Her crisis is considered from three perspectives in turn. The first perspective concerns the vicissitudes of developmental stages in early childhood which form the inner basis for mastering the progressive demands of adult life. The second concerns the nature of the developmental tasks posed by marital life which were strategically linked to her earlier history. The final and most distinctive perspective concerns contemporary family patterns in their relation to her personal crisis. In three other cases June Mark, Irene James and Donna Urey marital life also reproduced a situation which corresponded to an earlier turning point in the wives' relations to their mothers.
