The author writes, "Identity, in that it involves renunciation of what is not chosen, becomes then a template for the making of adult decisions." She discusses the groupings devised by Marcia of late adolescents as they struggle toward commitment to an adult identity: identity achievement, foreclosure, moratorium, and diffusion. Using data, primarily one sample history, from her own long-term studies of randomly selected college women, she explores the poignant struggles of young women wrestling with conscious and unconscious forces impelling them toward and withholding them from establishing separate adult identities.