CASE STUDY: LAURIE

Question

Laurie, a Grade 11 student was sick again. Why was she running this low-grade fever? She was tired. She had no energy. Could it be mononucleosis (kissing disease)? Laurie had heard that lots of teenagers felt this way from mononucleosis. Could that be the reason she was feeling ill?
After a series of blood tests revealed nothing definitive, the doctor mentioned the possibility of stress. Laurie was not able to identify anything that could be triggering it. And she knew that fevers are not caused by stress, or so she thought. Soon she started to feel better and forgot all about her symptoms and her fever until the next marking period when the symptoms reappeared. After four months of this recurring ailment, her parents and doctor began to note a predictable pattern It seemed that during her senior year of high school, Laurie became ill every time a paper was due in her advanced English class.
Could this be? Could written assignments trigger these symptoms? This deserved serious consideration, especially when her mom recounted the machinations she went through to complete the last assignment. Laurie was to write about Shakespeare, and after great difficulty deciding upon the right topic, she finally chose to write about the men who in Shakespeare's time played women and disguised themselves as men in the plot.
It was Laurie's pattern to choose the most difficult and obscure topic she could find or invent. To make matters even worse, Laurie lived in a university town and had access to the university library where she consulted highly advanced reference materials to support her tasks. Both these events, finding the topic and the resources, were rather challenging. Often she would procrastinate until the final moment came to sit down and write the paper. This repeated procedure was true for this paper as well.
With time almost running out and her stress levels increasing, Laurie felt fatigued and feverish. Laurie's grandmother had been an English teacher and an expert in classical literature. Her grandmother offered to help. Laurie accepted the invitation and arrived at her grandmother's house feeling so stressed by this time that a minor provocation initiated a screaming temper tantrum. As Laurie explained, "The screaming and crying, as I began to understand, was a way for me to relieve my stress. But my grandmother didn't know that and offered to drive me home." Her stress level lowered after the crying and screaming, Laurie felt greatly relieved. She calmed down and was able to talk through her ideas with her grandmother. Then she spent the rest of the night completing the paper. Completely drained the next day and still running a mild fever, she stayed home from school but managed to send the paper in.

Laurie’s stage of psychosocial development is commonly referred to as
a. Adolescence
b. Role confusion
c. Identity formation
d. A, B and C

Answer 1

Laurie’s stage of psychosocial development can be best described by option d. A, B and C.

1. Adolescence (A): This is the general stage in which Laurie is situated, as she is a Grade 11 student experiencing the typical challenges and changes that occur during this developmental period.

2. Role Confusion (B): This term refers to the struggle some teenagers face in identifying their personal roles and responsibilities, which is evident in Laurie's difficulty in managing her assignments and the stress associated with them.

3. Identity Formation (C): Adolescents are often in the process of forming their identities, which includes exploring various interests and aspects of themselves. Laurie's choice of difficult topics and her emotional responses reflect her grappling with her identity and self-perception.

Therefore, all three aspects are relevant to Laurie's experience during this time in her life.