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This small and very readable book sheds a most welcome light on a trend recently witnessed in clinical settings: the difficulties many adult patients have in separating from their families of origin. Sarah Usher uses a Mahlerian model to understand what she calls “failure to launch.” Forty years or so ago, analysts spoke about and wrote about “separation-individuation” in child and adolescent development, citing Margaret Mahler and her disciples (McDevitt & Settlage, 1971; Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975; Kaplan, 1978; Lax, Bach, & Burland, 1980). At that time, separation-individuation issues seen in adults were not so widespread, nor were they so culturally and economically entrenched. Today's increasing costs of higher education and housing and a real scarcity of good entry-level jobs for post-college, educated children has resulted in many of them moving home. There is a feeling among therapists that many young people feel “entitled” to what their parents earn and own. As a result, helping them to separate and individuate has become a much more complex task. Forty years ago children were expected to live on their own and support themselves once they reached the age of 21. They were expected to marry and have children soon after. Not so today.
Parents of adult children (and grandparents, too) are caught between their own needs to hold onto their children too long (for companionship, to feel young, to serve as buffers in a bad marriage, etc.) in a culture in which