Using personal and fictional documents to assess psychosocial development: a case study of Vera Brittain's generativity

Adult diaries and novels written by the British feminist and pacifist Vera Brittain (1893-1970) were content analyzed for Eriksonian themes of identity, intimacy, and generativity. Brittain's concerns with identity and intimacy decreased over time, while her generative concerns increased, suggesting that she expressed the issue of generativity vs. stagnation in her mid-life diaries and fiction. The large number of identity themes relative to both intimacy and generativity provokes speculations about Brittain's personality, the characteristics of writers, the influence of gender, the impact of society, and the possibility that the crisis of identity vs. role confusion involves the last major structural change in personality development. This archival case study is consistent with Erikson's notion of a sequence of concerns with psychosocial issues, although directions for theoretical revision and elaboration are discussed.