The object of this book is the investigation of personality development between adolescence and adulthood. It reports on a follow-up study carried out in 1953, in America, on twenty-eight persons who had all been tested and interviewed thirteen years earlier, while they were still adolescents.

It was hoped that light would be thrown upon:

1. The nature of the process through which an adolescent emerges into adulthood;

2. The value of adolescent fantasies on the one hand and overt adolescent personality on the other for predicting personality in later years;

3. The relative predictive value of (i) projective tests, (ii) autobiographies, (iii) interviews.