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In "Self-Reliance," what do you think Emerson means when he says that the adult is "clapped into jail by his consciousness"?

It sounds to me like Emerson is saying that as a person matures and becomes an adult, they become more tied down because of what they know - their consciousness.  A child can daydream and imagine to his/her heart's content and believe that all things are truly possible.  An adult knows better because as a person grows up, they realize the limitations that exist in life and that happy endings aren't a guarantee like they are in fairy tales.

In "Self-Reliance" Emerson notes that a baby can control an entire room with its spontaneous and "uncontolled" behavior.  As we grow older and come to realize that society places demands on us, demands about how we are to behave and think if we are to be "good members" of it.  "For non-conformity, the world whips you with its displeasure."  If we chose not to live outside the mold, we lose more and more of our freedom --- in a matter of speech, we are "jailed."

This is a common theme in Romanticism.  In "My Heart Leaps Up." Wordsworth notes that "the child is father to the man."  In the "Intimations of Immortality" he goes further to say that, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."