spiritual than sexual, and instead of revolving around the social func -
tion of procreation, they concerned the individual’s relation to self. Indi-
viduation was the term he coined to reflect the continuing process of
self-discovery and self-development, which he hypothesized would oc -
cur in the second half of life.
One of the key concepts in individuation was a balancing of oppos -
ing traits. Jung (1923/1971) conceived of the psyche as having two sets
of opposed functions for dealing with internal and external reality:thought versus feeling, and sensation versus intuition. At any time inthe life of the individual, one or another of these functions would bedominant and its opposite would be repressed. In order for there to be afull and complete expression of the self, however, the repressed side ofthe personality would also have to be allowed its chance. The psycho -
logical ideal was found in old age, when an integration of opposing
functions would mark the culmination of development. Similarly , otherpersonality structures, such as the persona (the mask one wears in so-cial interactions) and shadow (rejected and unconscious aspects of thepsyche) and the anima or animus (the feminine side of men or mascu-line side of women) must also be integrated. In general, this view ofadult personality would lead to the expectation that the manifest char-acteristics of a young person should change markedly with age, eitherbecoming their own opposites or moderating in degree as they wereintegrated with their complements.
Jung’s theories were based on his experience with psychiatric pa-
tients and on his own experience of aging, and were buttressed by hisscholarly studies of such obscure topics as alchemy and the I Ching .
Few psychologists have claimed fully to understand his ideas, and fewsubscribe to them in toto, but some of the basic notions, such as contin -
ued and personalized development and the rise of repressed sides of
self, have left a profound mark on subsequent theories.
Erik Erikson’s (1950) views of adulthood, on the other hand, have
become received wisdom in all their details. Erikson belongs to thegroup of ego psychologists (along with Erich Fromm, Karen Horney ,David Rapaport, and Anna Freud) who began with classical psychoana -
lytic theory and in greater or lesser degree modified it to take into ac -
count features they believed had been slighted by Freud. Classical psy -
choanalytic theory is fundamentally biological in tone and leaves little
room for the influences of culture or the individual’s own efforts atgrowth and change. Erikson’s solution to the problem of accounting for12 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD