A 90-Minute Interview: March 26, 2023 With Caitlin Corbett

Final Integrative Paper
Introduction
This paper analyzes a 90-minute interview that took place on March 26, 2023 with Caitlin Corbett. Caitlin is a retired dancer and educator, having both built her own dance company and led the dance department at Salem State University for a number of years. The interview questions were formed using the Circles of Sexuality as a framework which aided in cultivating a strong conversation about sexuality over her lifespan. For the purpose of this paper, two key events from her life were chosen to analyze further through developmental theories and education intervention. Those events are how she learned about sex as a teenager and the impact that had on her first sexual experiences, and her second marriage

In each stage there is a “crisis” that the individual needs to overcome in order to complete the stage and the crisis identified in the adolescent stage is a crisis of identity versus role confusion (Erikson, 1964). When looking at this first event from a psychosocial theory point of view, one could argue that Caitlin had a lot of role confusion when it came to her relationship with sex (Erikson, 1964). She said she had a lot of sex in her teens and early twenties while not enjoying it, describing her continued engagement in the activity as wanting “something from the boys” but never getting it (C. Corbett, personal communication, March 26, 2023). She later described this “something” as intimacy, saying that she wanted to be taken care of, but she didn’t get that until she was with a long term partner, her first husband. Her continuing to have sex in her teens and early twenties when it wasn’t what she wanted and she wasn’t getting what she needed out of it is an instance where she overidentified with the role she thought she was supposed to play based off of societal expectations, resulting in role confusion (Erikson,

She allowed the potential opinion of others to impact her true desire to express and explore her sexuality fully (Gilligan, 1977). She focused only on her needs and the goals of her needs, but allowed the influence of others to adjust her behavior out of fear of consequence, not out of a feeling of responsibility or necessity to change her behavior (Gilligan, 1977). When looking at level two of Gilligan’s theory, Caitlin began to adopt and internalize the societal values around sex that she was surrounded by, where having too much sex was deemed as bad, and she wrestled internally with the potential of her behavior equating her to being a “cock-tease”. When Caitlin discusses not wanting people to say things about her or gossip about her, she is displaying behavior that Gillian (1977) would describe as basing her goodness on the acceptance of