Adolescence and Adulthood

Transitions and Transformations

Leo Hendry, Marion Kloep

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781350312258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

From the teenage years to retirement, each phase of life presents different challenges and new experiences. Examining the patterns of development throughout the lifespan, the authors provide key insights into how we experience the world, and they examine how established theories have been challenged by recent changes to the understanding of human development. Whatever your level of study, this absorbing introduction will give you a deeper appreciation of the different life phases and how psychological principles aid our understanding of them.

Chapter 1

Stage Theories of Lifespan Development

Summary

In this chapter on stage theories we examine:

Four influential stage theories looking at human development over the lifespan;

Differences and similarities in these theories; and

Criticisms of these theories.

Introduction

In this book, we are exploring and explaining the various psychological and psychosocial transitions from adolescence through adulthood into old age, and the transformations that accompany these changes and developments. The discipline of Developmental Psychology has for a long time been dealing only with the childhood years – and sometimes still does. Yet, there is no question that ‘things do happen’ across the whole of the life course and these events will make people change at any age. Actually, it might be a terrifying thought if there were no developments or changes beyond the teenage years! Fortunately, not all scientists and academics endorse the notion that development only occurs during childhood, or at best into adolescence. Already by the beginning of the last century there were pioneers who posited theories of human development from birth to death. In this chapter we will present a brief description of their views.

Most of us will remember our childhood embarrassment when some relative we met only from time-to-time greeted us with an exclamation such as ‘Oh, how much you have grown!’ Yet, now we have to bite our tongue whenever we occasionally meet our friends’ children – because, yes, in the interim they have grown! Not only have they grown. Pimply, grumpy teenagers change into confident and friendly young adults, who change into successful career people, who again transform into respectable senior citizens, spoiling their grandchildren as they would never have done with their own children. While observing these changes, we are hardly aware of what is happening to ourselves, until we notice the reactions of others as they perceive us differently from a few years ago.

Of course, these obvious alterations have attracted the interests of psychologists, who try to explain why and how we change, not only in our appearance, but also in our behaviour, in our attitudes, our values and goals. Many have been interested only in child development, but there has been an increasing number of researchers who expanded this interest to exploring human development across the whole lifespan. Here is an outline of some of these theories.

The theory of Erik Erikson

One of the most influential scientists in this area was Erik Erikson. He was born in 1902 in Germany. First, he was a student of arts in Vienna, but then decided to become a psychoanalyst. As he was Jewish, he was forced to emigrate to the United States when the Nazis came to power. He worked at different universities, finally at Harvard, and he researched and published with his wife Joan until his mid-eighties. He died in 1994, when he was nearly 92 years old.

Like many of his contemporary colleagues, Erikson (1950, 1959) viewed development as occurring in stages. Though being influenced by Freud, he did not emphasize inner biological needs as the only driving force of development, but focused more on the person’s interaction with the social environment. During the entire lifespan, individuals develop by meeting a sequence of personal and social tasks that need to be accomplished for further growth to take place. Each of them causes a ‘crisis’ in individuals until they have learned ways of coping with them. The aim is to achieve a balance between the two possible outcomes of each crisis; leaning too much towards any extreme can have psychologically negative consequences. These challenges appear at certain points in the life course. Hence development is discontinuous, occurring in stages, but lifelong. These psychosocial stages are as follows:

Infancy (up to one year of age). This is the time when babies are utterly dependent on care-givers for survival. The task during this period is therefore to develop a certain amount of trust towards others (in contrast to mistrust) and to develop a belief that the environment can be relied upon to provide for one’s needs. This condition is fulfilled in a caring environment, where babies can develop a sense of relying on the people who look after them. If they are neglected or treated badly in this early period, mistrust will develop; children will view the world as unfriendly and might have difficulties forming relationships later on.

Early childhood (1–3 years). During this period, children learn to move and to talk, and to express their wishes. They are no longer completely reliant on their care-givers, and start to test their boundaries. If they are allowed to experiment, they have a chance to develop self-control and autonomy. However, if their attempts are restricted and their achievements not acknowledged, they might develop shame and doubt in their abilities.

Play age (3–6 years). In this stage, children can do many things on their own, and can be mischievous. Often they are aware of what they are allowed to do and what not. Thus, they develop a sense of personal initiative in mastering the environment. If guided well through this phase, they learn to keep a balance between their own and others’ needs and develop the skill of judgement. However, if others discourage the pursuit of activities, and punish them too often, too harshly and inconsistently, they start to feel guilty about their wishes to explore and about conflicts of interest with others.

School age (6–12 years). When starting school, most children are for the first time confronted with standards of excellence. Their work will be marked, and compared with others. If they do well, they will develop industry and self-esteem. However, if they constantly feel they are failing and are ‘not good at anything’, they will develop feelings of inferiority.

Adolescence (12–20 years). This is a time of huge changes. First of all, the body is transformed. But this leads to other challenges, in relation to peers, parents and romantic partners. There are career decisions to be made, and an increasing number of other decisions are now presented to the young person. These decisions emerge from questions such as: ‘Who am I?’ And ‘Who do I want to be?’ During this time the adolescent tries to establish a social, sexual and occupational identity. If this process is interrupted by external factors, the outcome might be role-confusion (we will discuss this issue in more depth in Chapter 3).

Young adulthood (20–40 years). It has been fun to have lots of friends during the adolescent years, and there has been a great deal of romantic and sexual experimentation. But now is the time to settle down and to achieve real intimacy: That is a full commitment to others, and in particular to a partner with whom to share one’s life and to have children. If young adults cannot make a sincere commitment to others, they risk social isolation (we will comment on this idea in Chapter 6).

Middle adulthood (40–65 years). For most people, life has now become fairly settled. They know who they are, and now see their main task in life as caring for others, either by raising children or by contributing to society in ways that will benefit the next generation. Erikson called this endeavour ‘generativity’. Failing to do so may lead to stagnation and selfindulgence.

Old age (65+ years). In this stage of life, one has either achieved one’s goals and fulfilled one’s dreams, or it is now too late to do so. People at this stage evaluate their lives, and they either come to the conclusion that it was meaningful or accept their impending death – Erikson calls this ‘integrity’ – or they become bitter about lost opportunities and despair in the face of death.

During each of these stages, one is surrounded by, and interacts with, others, who themselves are passing through particular life stages. While society has adapted itself to the individual, the individual in turn adapts to society. This is achieved in a way whereby the developmental needs of individuals in a certain age-band integrate effectively with the developmental needs of individuals in other age-groups. For example, the need of adults to become carers should coincide with the child’s needs to be taken care of (Miller, 2001).

The idea of ‘balance’ is important because the individual, ideally, should not adopt an extreme position of values at any stage. Yet, not all individuals are successful in attaining a balance between the two potential outcomes of each stage. If this balance is not achieved, it will lead to problems in future stages. For example, a child who does not develop autonomy in the early years will have difficulties in achieving a high degree of self-esteem when entering school, and an adult who did not achieve intimacy in young adulthood will be prevented from building up a high level of generativity in mid-life. However, Erikson’s theory does leave some room for optimism because it does not exclude the possibility that experiences later in life might help to heal the hurt and pain of negative experiences in early childhood.

The theory of Roger Gould

While Erikson saw development as a constant adaptation to society’s demands on the developing individual, the psychiatrist Roger Gould (1978, p. 321) is more interested in people’s own fears, preoccupations and assumptions, which they acquired during childhood and in their relationship with their parents:

I’ve come to understand ‘growth’ in one special way: As the release from arbitrary internal constraints. I don’t pay much attention to what happens after the release – that seems to take care of itself. It’s the work of liberation, not prescription, that has to be the focus of my attention.

He proposed a stage theory of transformations that start in the adolescent years and continue until mid-life. In his view, children trust completely in their parents and believe that their parents will always protect and nurture them. When reaching their mid-teens (around 16–22 years of age) they start to realize that this is a false assumption, and that they are required to make their own decisions, and to develop self-confidence: They have to leave their parents’ world.

From age 22 to 28, young people have learned to take control of many areas of their life. But they are still rather naive, and cling to the false assumption that if only they do things as their parents did, and do so with willpower and perseverance, they will achieve all their goals. They are still convinced that their parents will ‘bail them out’ if something does go wrong. During this period they have to confront reality and learn that life is not always just, that rationality will not always succeed, and that nobody will (necessarily) do for them, what they cannot do themselves. In the end, they will arrive at the insight that they are ‘nobody’s baby now’.

Once young adults have learned that, there is another false assumption they have to confront. Between the age of 28 and 34, they have to get rid of the idea that life is simple and controllable, and that there are no contradictory forces inside them. Up to then, they might have seen the world as black and white, and they might have been convinced that they know who they are, and that they have become what they are by their own choice. Now they begin to realize that things are not that simple and that there are sometimes contradictions between emotions and rationality. They learn to turn their attention to their deeper feelings and more complicated selves. That is why Gould called this period ‘opening up to what’s inside’.

While entering the mid-life decade, between 34 and 45 years, a new awareness develops. Up to then, most people have been healthy and most of their friends and relatives were still around. So, though everybody knows that human beings eventually die, the reality of death has not entered their lives until now. For that reason, people hold implicitly to the wrong assumption that there is not really death or evil in this world. Not only do they have to come to grips with their own and others’ mortality, they also become aware that there is betrayal, manipulation and evil in the world – and that they themselves often, willingly or not, conspire in creating evil. For instance, couples can hold unconscious ideas about each other’s character and intentions and thus build up a system of misunderstandings and wrong interpretations; blaming the other for what in reality is a childhood fear one does not dare to confront.

Beyond mid-life, finally, there are no more false assumptions to be tackled. Now is the time of making meaning for one’s life, to become reconciled with the fact that one has made mistakes, and to adjust to and accept life as it has turned out. This includes coming to terms with l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note from series editors
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Stage Theories of Lifespan Development
• 2. Ecological Theories of Human Development
• 3. What Is Adolescence?
• 4. Social Teenagers
• 5. From Teenagers to Early Adults
• 6. From Early Adults to Mid-Lifers
• 7. Old Age and Development: Towards Successful Ageing
• 8. Towards a New Positive Theory of Human Development
• Glossary
• References
• Index
• Reading guide