anxiety , gregariousness, or aesthetic sensitivity are trivial in his view , su -
perficial aspects of temperament that do not address the real, deep level
of personality . For him, the fact that a 50-year-old man views himself asmiddle aged when once he viewed himself as young is a startling changein personality; young andoldare not merely age categories, and calling
oneself middle aged does not mean simply that one is concerned aboutretirement plans and grandchildren. Young and old are symbols, Jung -
ian archetypes carrying profound connotations of vitality , immortality ,
and springtime in contrast with death, decay , and winter. Acknowledg -
ment of middle age is thus a change in the deepest symbolic signifi -
cance of the self.
Certainly , with age and experience come changes in some aspects
of how we view ourselves, and the idea of aging is obviously related atsome level to the metaphor of life and death. Perhaps poets are movedby these metaphors to change the style of their poetry as they age. Butdoes the change in the self-concept bring about important changes inthe behavior or experience of most individuals? Does it lead them to de-pression and suicide or to altruistic self-sacrifice? The answer, we think,is “No.” When children leave home, when aged parents require care, orwhen one retires from a lifelong occupation, there are profound changesin the daily routines that constitute the bulk of behavior, but thesechanges do not amount to changes in personality , and they come aboutin response to external necessity rather than internal development. Mendo not give up playing tennis because they start to feel old; they aremore likely to feel old because they have been forced to give up tennis.Nor is there much evidence, as we will soon see, that people feel differ -
ent during or after one of the hypothesized transition periods.
Is It Developmental?
The field of gerontology has always been fundamentally ambiguous
about the value of the changes it studies. University programs in this
area are typically called “Aging and Human Development,” as if the neg -
ative connotations of the first word had to be offset by more positive
ones. Levinson usually writes as if what he is describing were develop -
ment, a positive change, growth, and the attainment of higher unity and
deeper wisdom. As he progresses through life, the young man learnsmore about himself and his world and, in the best of cases, is able to riseabove the conflicts and illusions of youth to a greater maturity . He can174 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD