You don’t have to have studied psychology to have at least an un-huh acquaintance with Freud’s theories of personality development. Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital–yada yada yada ya. Starts at birth, ends with adulthood, and all the interesting bits come by the time you’ve begun First Grade.
However, after Freud came Erik Erikson, and he did have something interesting to say about the rest of life. Erikson factored the psychosocial into the development of personality and came up with eight stages that are on our ladder of living. Each stage consists of opposing urges which create a crisis that must be resolved in order for the individual to move on successfully to the next stage. The first six stages cover the years from birth through Young Adulthood, but it’s the Seventh Stage that relates to those of us in midlife.
Erikson saw that period of one’s life, which he call Middle Adulthood, as a time when the two conficting issues to be resolved are, in his words, Generativity versus Stagnation. Here’s what my DevPsych textbook (Theories of Development Psychology, Patricia H. Miller) says about it:
“Generativity refers to “the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation” through child rearing or creative or productive endeavors. Simply bearing children does not, of course, ensure that the parent will develop a sense of generativity. Faith in the future, a belief in the species, and the ability to care about others seem to be prerequisites for development in this stage. Instead of having children, one may work to create a better world for the children of others. Stage 7, then, provides the mechanism for the continuity of society from generation to generation.”
The other side of Generativity, it’s polar opposite, is “stagnation, self-absorption (self-indulgence), boredom, and a lack of psychological growth.”
I see this operating in people I know, in myself even. Creating MidLifeBloggers is a huge part of my urge for Generativity. In fact, I think the urge for Generativity is what draws the dividing line between Stage 7 and Stage 8, the final stage, in which Erikson saw the opposing urges as Integrity versus Despair. Integrity is, briefly,
“acceptance of the limitations of life, a sense of being a part of a larger history that includes previous generations, a sense of owning the wisdom of the ages, and a final integration of all the previous stages. The antithesis of integrity is despair–regret for what one has done or not done with one’s life, fear of approaching death, and disgust with oneself.”
Psychosocial development is culturally relative, which means that the specific ages at which we approach these stages depend to a great extent on one’s time and place. You can’t say that Midlife begins and ends at this age or that. Convenient (and cute) as it is to refer to Midlifers as BabyBoomers, it just ain’t necessarily so. I know too many women who are in their late sixties, early seventies even, who are still very much in Stage Seven. And there are any number of women who participate in MidLifeBloggers who are still in their thirties.
So, what developmental stage are you in? What does that mean to you? And, more important, what are you going to do about it?
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