For David Dean Brockman, the processes of personality consolidation that occur during young adulthood make this period of life “the most exciting of all phases of development…. Physical maturation has been completed. The monumental developmental tasks of integration, synthesis, and cohesion of multiple areas of personality result in a ‘strikingly observable settling down’ into a chosen career, searching for and finding a suitable partner with whom to achieve physical and emotional intimacy, mastery of the drives, fitting in with a social group identity, and the consequent establishment of clearly def ined sexual and gender identities” (p. 257). Three chapters of Brockman's book are devoted to the psychoanalytic assessment of young adults and an analytic exploration of two concepts related to forming the young adult personality: identity, and gender and sexual identity. The final four chapters discuss specif ic forms of developmental breakdown in young adulthood. These