The Mid-Life Transition: A Period in Adult Psychosocial Development

For the past nine years my colleagues and I have been working on a theory of adult psychosocial development in men (Levinson et al., 1974, 1977; Levinson, 1977). We have started some research on women (Stewart, 1977), but it is too early yet to report definitive theory or findings. Our aim is to encompass the many components of a man's life-all of his relationships with individuals, groups, and institutions that have significance for him. The components of life include his occupation and its evolution over the years, his love relationships, marriage, and family life, his various other roles and careers in numerous social contexts. This psychosocial approach includes the man's personality and the ways in which it influences and is influenced by the evolution of his careers in occupation, family, and other systems. The resulting theory is not a theory of personality development, nor of occupational development, nor of development in any single aspect of living. It deals, rather, with the development of the individual life in the broadest sense, encompassing all of these segments. This theory provides a context within which we can study in more detail the development of personality and of particular careers. I shall briefly describe the developmental periods we discovered in early and middle adulthood, giving major emphasis to one period, the Mid-life Transition. Like childhood and adolescence, these periods are found in the lives of all men. Of ourse, men traverse them in myriad ways, as a result of differences in class, ethnicity, personality, and other factors. My primary aim is to present some of our major concepts, hypotheses, findings, and ways of thinking about adult development. None of them have been fully validated. Together, they comprise a framework for the analysis of adult development. No doubt the theory will be modified an extended as a result of further investigation.