The adult life cycle had been mostly ignored. Sigmund Freud dealt with infancy and early childhood and his conclusions are invalid in the modern era. Jean Piaget concentrated on observation of early child development. Erik Erikson was the first to carry life-cycle thinking into adulthood. In his “Childhood and Society”, in 1950, he postulated 8 stages of the life cycle from birth to death, each stage transitioning through crises by which he meant critical turning points caused by the facts of growing up, ageing and death. But his childhood stages are too dependent on Freud. Joan Erikson, after her husband’s death, added a 9th Stage—-very old age which mainly concerns coping with the despair of one’s inevitable death, from the age 80s on.
Here is my take on the life cycle: Essentially we can all agree that every life has 2 major periods, controlled by physical and mental changes in the developing child—-childhood/adolescence, a period of growth and learning, mostly controlled by parents or other caretakers, and by the culture and era; and, after, adulthood, which we may say begins at 18 to 20 and encompasses early, middle and late periods directed by entry into adulthood and choice of life work (early) often with marriage and children, early aging and occupation (middle), and old age changes and death (late).
Childhood is not under the individual’s influence and I deal with it in Notebooks 8, directed at a child’s caretakers. Late Adolescence (Erikson’s Crisis of Identity vs Role Confusion) and Adulthood is what will interest us here because that is the span where each person has a growing input into shaping his or her adult life. Note that these are descriptive terms not really fixed biological stages and refer to observed main behavioral motifs in a life period
Early adulthood (roughly ages 18 to 30): Erikson starts it with his 6th stage, which he calls “Intimacy versus Isolation”. Here, the person is faced with the choice of a lifetime partner (Intimacy) or a perhaps lifetime singles status (Isolation). Also this is a period where the person chooses his life’s work, occupation or profession; usually based on his education and intelligence. Thus in an ideal setting the ages from 18 to 30 ought to involve strong consideration of life-partnership and parenthood as well as decision on life work. Here a mentor (an older, wise person or more than one) is invaluable as are holding seminars (Study and discussion meetings). This is rarely done but young readers should take note. The single life is not necessarily a poor choice. Isolating one’s self from the problems and worries of life partnership and substituting becoming a mentor or teacher of younger persons for parenthood may more free a person for a creative, mobile life than a life-partnership. (Many marrieds opt for a singles status for that reason as they reach the middle adulthood period.)
Middle adulthood (centered around the ages 40s and 50s) is a time when the adult makes his final choice of his life work, which may range anywhere from the usual 9 to 5 job to becoming a world-beating expert on a particular subject; and, once he or she chooses, he or she starts to accomplish it. This choice has usually been partly determined by an adult’s experiences and education but as in early adulthood, older mentors and seminars are most important.
Late adulthood starts with coming to terms with one’s death. In an ideal life, inevitable death comes to be accepted but its occurrence should be much delayed by attention to good health practices which should have been started by parents in childhood. The ideal life cycle sees the adult passing age 80 on his feet with wit and wits not much less than at age 30. Once the question of one’s death has been integrated into a persona without too much anxiety or fear, it should be shelved in one’s mind and one should try and complete one’s life work.
Erikson’s final two stages are: Generativity versus Stagnation, c.ages 40 to 60; and Integrity versus Despair, to one’s death. By Generativity he meant passing on one’s wisdom as teacher of the new generation as well as having a protective concern for all the new and coming generations and the Earth. By Integrity he meant the acceptance of one’s one and only life course and all those who have become significant to it as something that is of a piece, i.e., a completed useful life work, that is culmination of one’s life course.
Let us take a specific case for comment on the Eriksonian final stages of the life cycle: the writer JD Salinger; b.& d. dates, Jan. 1 1919 to Jan. 27 2010; main publications; Catcher in the Rye, 1951; Nine Stories, 1953; Franny and Zooey, 1961. JD Salinger guarded his privacy greatly. Certain things are public record. Between ages 32 an 42 he saw his 3 great books published and become best sellers. All 3 are still selling well nearly 70 years later so his lifetime income was by the 1950s guaranteed at a very high level. He bought land and built a home in rural New England and he neither worked nor traveled much, concentrating his life on his home and 2 children, and 2nd wife. He published nothing and made no public statements. On his death at age 91, his daughter from whom he was estranged bitterly criticized him as not a good father although she supplied no tell all Mommy Dearest memoir (Cf. star actress Joan Crawford). His son praised JD as having been a good father. His wives have remained silent.
If one views JD’s life from the standpoint of Erikson’s ideal life cycle, one may make some observations. He almost certainly seems to have decided at around age 40 (Start of Erikson,s stage of Generativity versus Stagnation) on the 2nd half of his life opting for a privacy devoted to family and to personal pursuits. Erikson would see it as Stagnation, and based on his final stage would have predicted that JD’s final years would show growing despair at their meaninglessness, being devoid of Generativity and instead devoted to a pursuit of personal interests and a detachment from the world. We can only guess until family members break the silence. But I would not jump to a conclusion though it seems the intuitive one. Perhaps pursuing selfish life interests relieved Salinger of what may have seemed in 1960 a life-down-dragging responsibility to be “generative”? Such end life questions as Erikson poses (Generativity or Doing nothing, i.e., stagnation?) are not easily answered.
My final criticism of the eriksonian schema is that it is too compartmentalized. The actuality I see from my unusual life is a more dynamic, flexible life cycle based on optimal healthy longevity allowing one choices at later stages of life that heretofore have seemed impossible. Thus, at age nearly 88, I am still successfully involved in the eriksonian identity crisis he posits for the 20s to 30s decade.
Dr Edward
To read immediately following chapters that may not otherwise be available in hypertext, click on each of the following chapters and read: 9.25 Psychiatry - Welcome All
No comments:
Post a Comment