The Adjustment of Young Employees to Their Love Lives and Work Lives.

As early as the 1930s Freud proclaimed that a mature personality is one capable of both love and loving, and constructive work and creativity. Gedo (1997) also advocated that the major components of mental health are love and work. This study looked at two major components of mental health, love and work, in the lives of Hong Kong young people. A focus group method was used to ask questions about work lives and love lives, and the resulting information was used to generate a questionnaire. The findings that levels of education, occupational status, and income positively correlate with satisfaction with work lives correlated with earlier research. Subjects who adopt more active and constructive ways of adjusting themselves to their work lives were more mentally healthy and satisfied. Females scored higher than males on items measuring quality relationships. This reflected a phenomenon that male subjects were less aware of such importance and they were less satisfied with their love lives. These findings suggest the need to help make males more able to maintain intimate relationships. (Contains 11 references.) (JDM)