points with important implications for the student of personality: First,
to the extent that personality can be identified with values, concerns,and interests, it appears that major changes in personality are postu -
lated to be the result of aging. Second, the turbulent nature of the life
course as described by Levinson suggests that something like cyclicalchange in Neuroticism is involved. If individuals go through 5-year pe -
riods of anguish, conflict, and alienation every few years, measures of
psychological distress ought to show it.
This theory is certainly more interesting than the bland assertion
that personality is stable in adulthood; the question is, is it true? A care -
ful and critical review of available evidence casts more than a little
doubt on the entire scheme. These are among the problems:
Is It Universal?
Levinson claimed that the sequences he found are universal, at least inhis sample. But reading the cases even as he presents them leavesdoubts. Some people had ostensibly smooth transition periods; sometried to break out of their life structure when they should have been set-tling down (of course, they paid the penalty later for that transgres-sion). Among the workers in particular, the success-ladder model didnot seem to make much sense: In the United States there is generallynot much hope for advancement for a 35-year-old factory worker.
Even if the scheme were descriptive for all Americans, the claim
for universality seems premature. In support, Levinson offered thestage theories of Solon, Confucius, and the ancient Hebrews, whichhe believed showed parallels to his theory . But none of these three in -
corpo rates periods of crisis—surely the cardinal feature of Levinson’s
scheme—and one is on a 10-year cycle, another on a 7-year cycle.
Confucius, for example, says that at age 40 he “no longer sufferedfrom perplexities.” Does that sound like the beginning of a midlifetransition?
What these timetables seem to indicate is a universal recognition
that there are growth and activity in the first half of life, and reflectionand decline in the second. They also illustrate the universal appeal ofdividing up the seamless web of adult life into convenient, although es -
sentially arbitrary , stages. The remarkable variety of “natural” divisions
of the lifecycle is clearly shown in an essay on William Shakespeare’s“seven ages of man” (S. C. Chew , 1947).172 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD