questionable. (As Neugarten, 1968, notes, at some point in middle age,
life begins to be measured in terms of time left to live rather than timelived.)
After the 1950s, research took the place of theorizing in this area.
Even earlier one investigator had made significant contributions to theliterature. Charlotte Bühler (1935) examined diaries and other personalrecords to chart the course of life in substantial samples of people. Shenoted a general “curve of life” including periods of growth, mainte -
nance, and decline, and focused on the motivational changes that she
believed occur with age. For the young person, instrumental strivingsare central to daily activities; for the older person, these become muchless important and are replaced by concerns for intrinsic values.
A large number of empirical studies were undertaken, in some
cases to test the theories proposed by Erikson and Jung, in others sim -
ply to see what happened as people aged (Neugarten, 1977). Cross-
sectional comparisons of young and old on a plethora of variables wereconducted, retrospective accounts were collected from aged men andwomen, and a handful of longitudinal studies were launched. We willreturn to these studies in later chapters; they do not concern us heresince they did not, in most cases, lead to theories of adult change. A fewregularities were reported from the cross-sectional studies, including anincrease in the level of introversion with age, but this change was rarelyinterpreted.
An exception to the atheoretical bent of these researches is found in
the work of Neugarten and her colleagues. At least two significant theo -
retical concepts of change in adulthood emerged here, based in both
cases on research using the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), inwhich psychologists interpret the stories told by subjects in response toa standard set of pictures, some commonplace, some bizarre. Neugartenherself (1964) was responsible for the concept of interiority. She postu -
lated that older individuals turn inward and consolidate their sense of
self. The identity that the adolescent takes on and the adult acts on isfurther distilled in old age, and individuals become more and more likethemselves. An increase in social introversion reported in some cross-sectional studies is sometimes taken as evidence of increased interiority ,but even Neugarten (1968) admitted that there seems to be no regularchange in social and emotional functioning with age. Some intrapsychicprocess not readily observable to an outsider must be meant by interi -
ority .14 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD