Life Course in Middle Age

O NE significant way of viewing the life of an individual is in relation to what has been termed his "life course." This has two components: life goal and career. Life goals are those aims which have highest value, can be attained only after a relatively protracted series of activities, and become the person's reason for existence. The series of activities engaged in to achieve these goals constitutes a career. The life goals give purpose and meaning to one's life; the career directs and organizes life.' Charlotte Biihler and her associates have found that in Western society people go through a regular sequence of five stages in their life course.2 The first is the exploratory stage of youth (beginning at an average age of 17), in which the individual tentatively tries out various life courses. The second is the selective stage of maturity (beginning at an average age of 28), in which the individual definitely decides upon specific life goals and channelizes his activities accordingly into a particular career. The third is the testing stage of early middle age (beginning at an average age of 43); it is a period in which the individual examines his career to determine the extent to which he has achieved his life goals and the degree to which he has obtained the gratifications he hoped to gain from his life course. The fourth stage is that of indulgence in later middle age (beginning at an average age of 48); the individual concentrates on achieving the maximum gratification from what remains of vigorous life. The fifth is the completion stage of old age (beginning at an average age of 64); in it the individual looks back on his life, lives on past accomplishment, and begins to finish off his life course. A good deal of work is being done on the first two stages by students of adolescence and early maturity and on the last stage by students of old age, but relatively little scientific research has been undertaken on the third and fourth stages of middle age.3 The importance of the subject-the fact that middle age presents a problem to Americans-is indicated by the circumstance that a book like Life Begins at Forty4 has been a best seller. The present paper, therefore, deals with the results of a study of the life course in middle age (Biihler's third and fourth stages). We will start with a consideration of the adjustment made by Americans. The third or testing stage is one in which the individual compares his level of achievement with his level of aspiration. On this basis he may decide he is a failure, inconclusive, partially successful, or successful. Failures are of two types, the acknowledged and the grandiose. The acknowledged failure is an individual who, when going through the testing stage, decides that he has not achieved to any appreciable degree the life goals toward which he aspires and that neither his abilities nor the conditions confronting him will ever permit him to do so. This judgment is either objectively warranted or made because of a psychotic depression. The result is that the failure feels that he has pursued his life course in vain, and his reason for existence disappears. Few people have the courage to acknowledge failure, and so this adjustment is relatively rare. Some, in despair, try to escape; the extreme adjustment in this case is suicide.5 Others develop a stoic outlook. Most find it comforting to seek another purpose in life, reverting to the exploratory and selective stages in order to find a new life course which, it is hoped, will finally lead to success.