The Human Odyssey

The Twelve Gifts of the Human Life Cycle

A guest blog I did appears today on Basil & Spice:

Which stage of life is the most important?   Some might claim that infancy is the key stage, when a baby’s brain is wide open to new experiences that will influence all the rest of its later life. Others might argue that it’s adolescence or young adulthood, when physical health is at its peak.  Many cultures around the world value late adulthood more than any other, arguing that it is at this stage that the human being has finally acquired the wisdom necessary to guide others.  Who is right?  The truth of the matter is that every stage of life is equally significant and necessary for the welfare of humanity.  In my book The Human Odyssey: Navigating the Twelve Stages of Life, I’ve written that each stage of life has its own unique “gift” to contribute to the world.  We need to value each one of these gifts if we are to truly support the deepest needs of human life.  Here are the twelve gifts of the human life cycle:

1.      Prebirth:  Potential – The child who has not yet been born could become anything – a Michaelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Martin Luther King – and thus holds for all of humanity the principle of what we all may yet become in our lives.

2.      Birth:  Hope – When a child is born, it instills in its parents and other caregivers a sense of optimism; a sense that this new life may bring something new and special into the world.  Hence, the newborn represents the sense of hope that we all nourish inside of ourselves to make the world a better place.

3.      Infancy (Ages 0-3):   Vitality – The infant is a vibrant and seemingly unlimited source of energy.  Babies thus represent the inner dynamo of humanity, ever fueling the fires of the human life cycle with new channels of psychic power.

4.      Early Childhood (Ages 3-6):  Playfulness – When young children play, they recreate the world anew.  They take what is and combine it with the what is possible to fashion events that have never been seen before in the history of the world.  As such, they embody the principle of innovation and transformation that underlies every single creative act that has occurred in the course of civilization.

5.      Middle Childhood (Ages 6-8):  Imagination – In middle childhoood, the sense of an inner subjective self develops for the first time, and this self is alive with images taken in from the outer world, and brought up from the depths of the unconscious.  This imagination serves as a source of creative inspiration in later life for artists, writers, scientists, and anyone else who finds their days and nights enriched for having nurtured a deep inner life.

6.      Late Childhood (Ages 9-11):  Ingenuity – Older children have acquired a wide range of social and technical skills that enable them to come up with marvelous strategies and inventive solutions for dealing with the increasing pressures that society places on them.  This principle of ingenuity lives on in that part of ourselves that ever seeks new ways to solve practical problems and cope with everyday responsibilities.

7.      Adolescence (Ages 12-20):  Passion -  The biological event of puberty unleashes a powerful set of changes in the adolescent body that reflect themselves in a teenager’s sexual, emotional, cultural, and/or spiritual passion.  Adolescence passion thus represents a significant touchstone for anyone who is seeking to reconnect with their deepest inner zeal for life.

8.      Early Adulthood (Ages 20-35):  Enterprise –  It takes enterprise for young adults to accomplish their many responsibilities, including finding a home and mate, establishing a family or circle of friends, and/or getting a good job.  This principle of enterprise thus serves us at any stage of life when we need to go out into the world and make our mark.

9.      Midlife (Ages 35-50):  Contemplation – After many years in young adulthood of following society’s scripts for creating a life, people in midlife often take a break from worldly responsibilities to reflect upon the deeper meaning of their lives, the better to forge ahead with new understanding.  This element of contemplation represents an important resource that we can all draw upon to deepen and enrich our lives at any age.

10.  Mature Adulthood (Ages 50-80): Benevolence – Those in mature adulthood have raised families, established themselves in their work life, and become contributors to the betterment of society through volunteerism, mentorships, and other forms of philanthropy.  All of humanity benefits from their benevolence.  Moreover, we all can learn from their example to give more of ourselves to others.

11.  Late Adulthood (Age 80+):  Wisdom – Those with long lives have acquired a rich repository of experiences that they can use to help guide others.  Elders thus represent the source of wisdom that exists in each of us, helping us to avoid the mistakes of the past while reaping the benefits of life’s lessons.

12.  Death & Dying:  Life – Those in our lives who are dying, or who have died, teach us about the value of living.  They remind us not to take our lives for granted, but to live each moment of life to its fullest, and to remember that our own small lives form of a part of a greater whole.

            Since each stage of life has its own unique gift to give to humanity, we need to do whatever we can to support each stage, and to protect each stage from attempts to suppress its individual contribution to the human life cycle.  Thus, we need to be wary, for example, of attempts to thwart a young child’s need to play through the establishment high-pressure formal academic preschools.  We should protect the wisdom of aged from elder abuse.  We need to do what we can to help our adolescents at risk.  We need to advocate for prenatal education and services for poor mothers, and support safe and healthy birthing methods in third world countries. We ought to take the same attitude toward nurturing the human life cycle as we do toward saving the environment from global warming and industrial pollutants.  For by supporting each stage of the human life cycle, we will help to ensure that all of its members are given care and helped to blossom to their fullest degree.

To read my other blog entries on Basil & Spice.

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Concepts in Human Development: Lost Possible Selves

In Henrik Ibsen's play Romersholm, a middle-aged tutor named Ulrik Brendel brags to his friends about all the potential creative literary projects that he has inside of him just waiting to be let out.  But one day, he tells his friends that he has just come to a shocking conclusion:  "For five and twenty years I have been like a miser sitting on his locked money chest.  And then today, when I opened it to take out my treasure, there was nothing there.  The mills of time had ground it into dust. There was not a blessed thing left of the whole lot."  Brendel had waited too long to develop this possibility in himself.  Had he begun writing twenty-five years before, when the impulse to create had first impressed itself upon him, he would have over that period of time brought into realization his potential as a literary artist.  Now, however, he had to face what psychologists are calling these days a "lost possible self."  In the October 2007 issue of American Psychologist (a journal of the American Psychological Association), Laura A. King and Joshua A. Hicks write about how people deal with their lost possible selves in an article entitled: "Whatever Happened to 'What Might Have Been.'"  They note that many people have difficulty thinking about their lost possible selves because this often leads to regrets, distress, and a lowered sense of well-being.  These individuals pursue a strategy of not thinking about "what might have been" so that they are able to preserve a sense of happiness in life.  These individuals prefer to focus on the goals that they have chosen to develop in life, and to reap the satisfaction that comes from meeting these goals.  This represents one dimension of maturity in adult development.  However, there are other individuals who are able to handle more complexity in their lives, and these individuals can often reflect upon their lost possible selves and also experience a deep happiness in their lives, despite, or perhaps one might even say, because of, the difficulties and disappointments that they have had to face.  One mother in their study, for example, whose personal life goals were interrupted for a time by the experience of giving birth to a child diagnosed with Down Syndrome, said:  "I was on the road to self-discovery. . . . I was searching for a little more purpose. Being a mother, being a wife, being a nurse was not enough: I wanted to fulfill my destiny. I wanted to continue on the search for self actualization.  Well [my son] came along.  Everything was tested, values, beliefs, friendships, wedding vows, etc. Much growth, difficult growth, lots of confusion, but I am on the other side now . . . I am right back on track and could not be happier.  I'm stronger--I'm more experienced, and God knows, I'm much more compassionate and humble." (p. 630)   The authors of this study conclude that spending too much time focusing on what has been lost correlates to unhappiness, but for the individual who is willing to engage in an honest process of self-exploration, such disappointments concerning "lost selves" can serve as spring to a broader vision of oneself. 

If you are in your fifties, sixties, or beyond, take some time to reflect on one or more of your lost possible selves.  Perhaps you wanted to be a major league baseball player, a nuclear physicist, a surgeon, a best-selling author by the age of forty, a famous politician, a glamorous movie star, a world-class ballerina, or even less lofty but still significant goals:  reaching a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, being the mother or father of happy and successful children, attaining the highest level at your place of work, maintaining perfect health into old age.  Perhaps you know now that it's too late, or simply not possible, to become that thing that you wanted to be so badly.  Are you willing to fully experience the regret of not having reached your goal, of not having fully developed this aspect of yourself?  And can you find a deeper meaning in this loss?  In a sense, losing a possible self is like losing a significant person in our lives.  We need to grieve this loss, but we also need to get on with our lives.  If we are fortunate, we can learn to view this loss as a deepening of our understanding of life's journey, and of how it has made us richer and more complex human beings.  The Germans have a word Torschlusspanik, meaning "the panic of closing doors," to refer to the process of freaking out when we realize it is too late to develop some aspect of ourselves.  Perhaps we need a new word that means something like "the wisdom that comes from closing doors."  The psychoanalyst and developmental psychologist Erik Erikson defined integrity in late adulthood as an acceptance of one's one and only life cycle as something that had to be (Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, p. 104).  This encounter with our lost possible selves may help us toward this fundamental acceptance of life. And this, according to Erikson, makes it possible for us to face our death as well.

Are You a "Rememberer" or an "Adapter"?

I believe that there are two types of people in this world.  There are those who spend much of their lifetime trying to "remember" the essence of existence, their deepest origins, and the most profound meanings of life. These are the "rememberers."  On the other hand, there are those who focus most of their energies upon "adapting" to the circumstances around them, trying to get ahead in the world, meeting deadlines and goals, showing up the competition, and making it in the big world.  These are the "adapters."  Here's a little quiz to help you figure out if you're more of a "rememberer" or an "adapter."  Circle any item that applies to you.

1.  I like Bill Gates better than Deepak Chopra.

2.  I prefer to spend my time meditating than partying.

3.  I would rather attend a financial seminar than a workshop on personal transformation.

4.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of life.

5.  In school, I was more concerned with learning for its own sake than getting good grades.

6.  When I was a young child, I had non-ordinary visions, dreams, or other profound inner experiences.

7.  In history, I admire Napoleon more than the Buddha.

8.  I think a lot about the economy and where it's headed in the future.

9.  I think educational systems should focus more on getting kids to read, write, and do math, and less on art, history, or music.

10. I prefer to read science books over poetry or literature.

11. I'd rather be a writer than a political leader.

12. If I had my choice, I'd prefer living alone in a hut in the woods rather than with a lot of people in a big urban apartment.

13. For me, the spiritual life represents the best part of being alive.

14. I'm more concerned with getting ahead in my existing job, than in finding a new job that let's express more of my potential.

15. In my mind, an investment banker contributes more to society than a monk meditating on a mountain.

16. I believe that recent advances in technology have made our world a far better place to libe in than it was in the past.

17. I'd rather spend time with people who like to talk about the "big" questions of life (e.g. who are we? why are we here? why do bad things happen to good people? etc.) than with those who like to discuss this week's current events.

18. I would rather spend more time looking within myself for meaning in life, rather than looking outward to people and events to help me get ahead.

19. Some of my best moments are when I've had an idea that has practical significance or an insight that can make me more money.

20. I'd rather travel to Tibet or Bali than London or Paris.

If you circled more than five of these statements - 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19 - then you incline toward being an "adapter."

If you circled more than five of these statements - 2, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 20, then you have a proclivity toward being a "rememberer."

If you circled an equal number of "adapter" and "rememberer" statements, then you have a good balance of these two aspects of being human.

To learn more about "remembering" and "adapting," and how they fit into the whole scheme of human development, read The Human Odyssey:  Navigating the Twelve Stages of life.

Rites of Passage: Marking Our Movement from One Stage of Life to the Next

The concept of rites of passage was first articulated by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) in his book The Rites of Passage, first published in 1908.   In this seminal work, van Gennep subdivided rites of passage into three sub-categories:  rites of separation, transition rites, and rites of incorporation.  These rites might represent components of one overall rite of passage, or be given greater or lesser emphasis in specific rituals or ceremonies.  van Gennep writes:  ". . . although a complete scheme of rites of passage theoretically includes preliminal rites (rites of separation), liminal rites (rites of transition), and postliminal rites (rites of incorporation), in specific instances these three types are not always equally important or equally elaborated." (The Rites of Passage, p. 11).  Anthropologist Victor Turner took van Gennep's model and gave particular emphasis to the liminal rites, suggesting that after being separated from the society, but before being incorporated back into it, the person going through the rite of passage existed in a sort of "betwixt and between" state, a kind of limbo, where their identity was temporarily suspended.  The concept of rites of passage was perhaps given its best exposure to the public through Joseph Campbell's best-selling book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which describes the journey of the hero crossing the threshold into the underworld to seek a great treasure or boon, and then returning back to society to share the newly acquired gift with others.  Much of the attention given to rites of passage over the years has focused on puberty rituals, particularly in Africa and Aboriginal Australia.  These rituals were often quite brutal in nature, requiring novices to endure starvation, mutilation, infestation, radiation (from the sun), and other insults, from which not every member survived.  In a way, it was a culture's system of "quality control," to ensure that those who were admitted to the adult role in that society had the specific attributes needed by the community (e.g. strength, endurance etc.).  In a broader sense, it was a way for a culture to bring its members from the dependent state of childhood to the independent state of adulthood where they could actively contribute to the community's wellbeing and continuity.  Although puberty rituals have been the focus of much of the discussion concerning rites of passage, the concept of rites of passage applies equally well to other ages and stages of life, including birth, marriage, and death.  In modern culture, rites of passage have generally gone through a process of disintegration, often only retaining traces of those elements that were once part of a full-bodied rite of passage.  One may see the remnants of ancient rituals in such things as fraternity hazings, high school graduation ceremonies, or debutante balls.  In some cases, religious or ethnic groups have sought to maintain and strengthen traditional rites of passage (e.g. the bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, the quinceañera etc.), or to create new rites of passage to help their youthful members achieve maturity (this has been, for example, an important development in many African-American communities in the United States).  Because rites of passage are not often an integral part of contemporary society, people may decide to create their own rituals.  Sometimes this is done with a great deal of creativity and respect for tradition (for example, the Simchat Chochma or Joy of Wisdom Ceremony developed by Savina Teubel to celebrate her 60th birthday).  Othertimes, this is done on a very ad hoc and impromptu basis, especially in adolescence, by individuals who are unconsciously acting out certain elements of rites of passage (especially the separation and liminal phases), but not including an incorporation phase back into the society.   One sees this sort of thing in adolescents who engage in substance abuse, gang activity, risky sexual behaviors, or other forms of reckless endangerment.  The missing element in these cases is almost always the presence of mature individuals, themselves having passed the threshold into adulthood, who can help these adolescents make a safe journey across the great divide. For older individuals, the passage from one stage of development to the next phase (e.g. early adulthood to midlife),  may also occur in the unconscious, but have a better outcome by its being made conscious through active work in psychotherapy, the arts, or other forms of therapeutic or symbolic activity.  All in all, the concept of rites of passage is a useful one in comprehending the broad picture of the human life cycle.  It helps articulate the underlying psychological forces, and the overt socio-cultural forces, that help an individual make the transition from one stage of development to the next.

The Transitional Object: A Half-Way House for Identity Formation

I fly a lot, and when I travel I see a lot of people carrying teddy bears in the airport; not just children; adults too.  Everytime I see somebody carrying one onto a plane, I think of the idea of the "transitional object."  This term was coined in 1951 by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott.  It's a developmental concept, and refers to a critical point in a child's early development when she is starting to separate her own identity from that of her mother.  Up until that point, according to the "object relations" school that exists as one branch of psychoanalysis, baby sees "mommy and me" as one.  It would perhaps be better to say that when a child has an experience at this very early level, it experiences "I" as "mommy-me" in a fused whole. Eventually, baby separates her own identity from mommy, and realizes that there are a whole range of ways in which to experience the world as an independent identity (e.g. through language, play, art, etc.), where "I" am playing with "a doll/truck/dog"; where "I" as a subjective entity can come into relationship with an objective "thing" that is out there in the world.  There is, however, an in-between state in development, when the child has not yet fully separated from mommy, nor has she begun to experience herself as an "I" in direct relationship with the objective world.  This is what Winnicott called "the transitional space" ; a place existing between subjective and objective reality, between "I and "object."  In this in-between space the child experiences a particular object such as a piece of cloth or a furry part of a teddy bear as neither mommy-me nor "I am in a relationship to a real object" but as a kind of mix of the two.  This transitional object has pieces of "mommy-me" on it, so to speak, and also pieces of the external world.  It serves as a half-way house, in essence, for the child to begin to separate herself from this omnipotent identity she has with her mother (e.g. "when I wish for food, mommy-me brings it to me"), and to start making contact with the real world out there (where ultimately she will experience herself as getting her own food). But at the same time she is still infusing this object with lots of "mommy-ness."  If the relationship with mommy has been a "good enough" one (another term coined by Winnicott) then this transitional object will be a nurturing, soothing experience.  If the relationship with mommy has been bad (e.g. abusive, neglectful, hurtful etc.), then this object can become threatening (one thinks here of the doll "Chucky" in the recent series of horror films).  At any rate, whether it be a Linus blanket or a soft doll or teddy bear, or something else (Winnicott said it could also be a word or musical refrain), this transitional object helps to relieve anxiety and enables the child to ultimately face the unknown with confidence.  When a child or adult carries a teddy bear or doll onto an airplane, this may be a residual memory of that first transitional object, since many people find flying anxiety-provoking.  Carrying teddy into the "friendly" skies may help these individuals face this on-going project of heading into the unknown with assurance.

For more information, read D.W. WInnicott's book Playing and Reality.

Neoteny: The Lost Fountain of Youth Rediscovered

Reflecting upon his scientific achievements, Albert Einstein once noted:  "I sometimes ask myself . . . how did it come that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity?  The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time.  These are things which he has thought of as a child.  But my intellectual development was retarded, [italics mine] as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up." (quoted in Einstein:  The LIfe and Times by Ronald Clark, p. 27).   Einstein "intellectually retarded"?  What he was referring to is neoteny (Latin for "holding youth"), a concept in developmental biology that refers to the retention of childlike characteristics into adulthood.  One of the best books on this subject is Ashley Montagu's Growing Young.  In the first half of the book, Montagu describes biological neoteny; how, for example, two traits - the rounded forehead and chin of an infant ape -  are "lost" as that ape grows into maturity (in the adult ape, the forehead recedes and the chin juts out sharply).  In this case, there is no neoteny - these youthful characteristics are not retained into maturity.  But with homo sapiens, the rounded forehead and chin of an infant child are retained into adulthood.  The adult may have gray hair, wear eyeglasses, and develop jowels, but those two infantile traits of chin-ness and forehead-ness have been largely preserved.  In this case, there is neoteny:  these two youthful traits have been retained into maturity. The great evolutionary thinker Stephen Jay Gould believed that human beings are just neoteous apes; in other words, the youthful characteristics of apes have, in the course of evolution, simply been held into adulthood in human beings.  According to Gould, this is the most important determination of human evolution (see his book Ontology and Phylogeny).  It was neoteny, for example, that slowed down the development of the human brain after birth so that it could continue to grow and develop in relationship to the specific environmental conditions around it.  This brain neoteny conferred an incredible capacity for adaptability onto humans, leading to increased chances for survival and the passing on of "neotenous genes." In the second half of Ashley Montagu's book, he talks specifically about psychological neoteny.  He examines several psychological traits of children - playfulness, curiosity, humor, creativity, sensitivity, and wonder, among many others - and suggests that these are also traits that need to be retained into adulthood (I have also explored the importance of retaining these childlike traits into adulthood in my book Awakening Genius in the Classroom).  What happens, for example, if the flexibility of childhood is lost in adulthood?  Then you have a situation where the world is full of inflexible adults.  Consider that some of these inflexible adults have their fingers on nuclear buttons around the world and are involved in major global disputes.  You can begin to appreciate how the presence or absence of  the childlike trait of flexibility may make all the difference between our species continuing to survive, or alternatively, our species blowing itself up in a nuclear war and becoming extinct.  Similarly, what happens when curiosity or creativity are lost as the child becomes an adult?  Then we develop a culture that cannot continue to adapt to changing conditions.  Fortunately, our species seems to retain these psychological youthful traits in at least some of its members; mostly, it seems, in creative artists, inventors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other innovators of society.  Look, for example, at the boyish qualities and childlike enthusiasm of Bill Gates - there's a case of neoteny that has had a profound influence on technology.  Other examples of neotenous individuals might include Pablo Picasso, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Newton (who said he felt like a child on the beach playing with ideas as if they were beautiful seashells), William Shakespeare (whose bawdy puns and insults offended the non-neotenous critics of his day) and many others.  It deserves mentioning here that the concept of neoteny puts a bit of a crimp in the concept of "immaturity" in psychiatry and psychology.  It turns out that being immature may not be such a bad thing after all!

For a self-help book based on neoteny called You're Only Young Twice, by Ronda Beaman, click here.

Crystallizing Experiences: Having Our Date with Destiny

When Albert Einstein was four, his father gave him a simple magnetic compass for his birthday.  Later on, in adulthood, Einstein wrote that this simple toy served to unlock his feelings of curiosity and wonder about the world   He said that from that time on he was filled with a desire to ferret out the secrets of the universe.

When Yehudi Menuhin was about the same age, his parents took him to hear the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  After the violin performance, he told his parents that he wanted a violin for his birthday and that he wanted the man who performed on stage to be his teacher.  Not wealthy, his parents nevertheless obtained a violin for him, and persuaded the man on stage to give him lessons.

When Martha Graham was sixteen, her father took her to see the dancer Ruth St. Denis at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles.  Thrilled by the performance, she decided to become a dancer and enrolled in an arts-oriented junior college.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Each of these experiences was what has been termed by researchers a "crystallizing experience."  These are experiences that can happen at any time of life, but often occur during the early years, when a seemingly simple experience--a toy, a concert, a conversation--unlocks a potential that has been just waiting around for something to start it rolling on its way towards high levels of achievement.  I like to call them "destiny experiences" because they represent a moment of time during human development when something seems to call from on high to remind an individual of their gifts and of what they are here on earth to accomplish.   A wonderful book that explores certain aspects of this kind of experience is James Hillman's The Soul's Code:  In Search of Character and Calling.

What were the destiny experiences in your life?

The Eight Journeys of Your Life

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (MI theory) has revolutionized the field of education.  But it also has important implications for developmental psychology.  Gardner's theory says that there are at least eight different intelligences:  linguistic (word smart), logical-mathematical (numbers and reasoning smart), spatial (picture smart), musical (music smart), bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)), interpersonal (people smart), intrapersonal (self smart), and naturalist (nature smart).  One little known part of MI theory says that each of the intelligences has its own developmental trajectory through the life span.  Music seems to develop earlier than any of the intelligences.  We see five year olds performing and composing music (like Mozart).  Music also stays robust until late in life.  Eubie Blake, Igor Stravinsky, and Leopold Stokowski were all still musically active well into their eighties.  Logical-mathematical intelligence, on the other hand, doesn't develop as early as music.  We don't see five-year-olds creating their own mathematical theorems.  But logical-mathematical intelligence develops pretty early in the lifespan.  We DO see teenagers creating unique systems of mathematical thought.  Blaise Pascal was sixteen when he came up with some ideas that are still used today by mathematicians.  It seems that the most creative time for mathematicians is in adolescence and early adulthood.  It's been said that if a person hasn't made an original contribution to math by the age of forty, he or she never will.  Of course, if you're an Olympic-level gymnast (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence), you may be over the hill at the age of eighteen!  If you're in midlife and want to reach high levels of accomplishment in an area that you haven't spent much time with, then consider linguistic, interpersonal, or intrapersonal intelligences.  Toni Morrison didn't publish her first novel until she was thirty nine!  Many world leaders don't come into their own until after midlife.  It takes time to develop wisdom.  No matter who you are, though, it's never too late to develop all eight of your intelligences.  For more information on multiple intelligences, click here.  To read about the different trajectories that multiple intelligences have during the life span, see Howard Gardner's book Frames of Mind, or my book 7 Kinds of Smart.