way about us; one of the explanations for stability is the social pressure
applied to keep everyone in his or her place. We can shape our ownlives, attain our dreams, and find fulfillment for ourselves only if we canmake realistic plans for the future. Since so much of life depends on in -
teractions with others, being able to guess how they are likely to re -
spond years from now is essential.
The same is even more true for ourselves. Continuity in personality
is a requirement for planning a viable future; it is also a source of thesense of identity . When, in Erikson’s last stage, we review our lives andtake stock of what we have been and done, we must do so to some ex -
tent in terms of our enduring dispositions. If we are high in Conscien -
tiousness, we will take pride in our accomplishments; if we are low , we
will recall all the fun we had. Lifelong dreams of writing poetry or fos -
tering a family or dominating an industry make sense only in terms of
the basic needs and traits they express. The constancy of personality is aunifying thread that gives meaning to our lives.
***
Once we begin to think in terms of stability , it becomes increasingly in-
tuitive. Our parents and grandparents do not seem to change, althoughour understanding of them may alter greatly as we grow up. Historytells us that Beethoven was a rebel at age 20 and at age 50, that Chair-man Mao did not grow conservative with age. Hospital and prison re-cords show that tendencies towards mental illness and antisocial behav -
ior are dishearteningly stable. One begins to wonder how the idea of
adult development ever arose to begin with.
But are we perhaps missing the whole point? Granted, emotional,
interpersonal, and experiential styles may be relatively fixed, but arethese the real cores of personality? Or are they instead peripheral char -
acteristics whose stability is no more remarkable or noteworthy than
stability in color of eyes or size of feet? Perhaps what is needed is not adifferent form of personality test or a different personality rater but awholly different conception of personality in which it is seen not as traitbut as process. Perhaps processes change with age.138 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD