geance. The roles of adult, parent, husband, woman, and breadwinner
are adopted wholesale, in part because the inexperienced adult has noother basis for guidance and in part because he or she believes that fol -
lowing all the rules, working hard, and persevering will guarantee hap -
piness. To be sure, these kinds of activity may well be the best bet for
creating a satisfying life, but no behavior can guarantee happiness, love,
or success, and that is the lesson which must be learned, on an emo -
tional as well as an intellectual level.
By age 28 a new phase starts. The difficulties of building a life tend
to have been mastered well enough, and the internal side now clamorsfor attention. Wishes, values, and feelings that were ignored during theearly pragmatic years of getting started suddenly take on a new impor -
tance. Career and marriage choices are reevaluated, and we come to the
painful conclusion that life is not the simple, controllable affair weimagined. The illusions that we knew ourselves and that we were ratio-nal, consistent, and independent people are challenged.
Finally , in the midlife decade, an even harder pill must be swal-
lowed: We must admit to ourselves that evil, death, and destruction area real part of the world and even a real part of us. We have an evil sidethat may be controlled but cannot be eliminated; and we face a certaindeath, with time the only question. The decline of our parents at thistime plays a part in shaking the belief that they can save us from our-selves or from external danger. Facing these facts may lead to a periodof intense struggle and distress, a midlife crisis. But once the challengehas been confronted, once we have come face to face with our existen -
tial aloneness, we achieve the freedom that comes from what Gould
called “owning ourselves.”
How do we evaluate this theory? As a theory of psychotherapy , its
first test would be in its effectiveness in helping clients to resolve theirproblems. In the hands of a skilled clinician such as Gould, the theoryseems to be effective—but the history of psychotherapy teaches us that,in the hands of a skilled clinician, almost any theory can be effective.More convincingly , research Gould (1972) conducted on a large sampleof adults who were not patients confirmed that there is a change in the“march of concerns” over the early adult lifespan: Young adults are con -
cerned with getting along with (or away from) their parents; men and
women in their 20s are concerned with starting family and career; thosein their 30s complain more of stagnation; and for those at midlife, fac -
ing death and decline are relatively more frequent problems.The Personal Interview 177