Transition in Adulthood

Research on Stages and Transitions

Erik Erikson (1950) established one of the most influential models of stage progression. Based on interview data with his clients, he described eight stages of development. Among these are an adolescent stage, in which one must form an identity, and three adult stages. In the adult stages, beginning with early adulthood, one must resolve the issue of intimacy versus isolation by reaching out and making connections with other people, or risk leading a shallow life devoid of meaningful bonds. Erikson throughout his career remained firm in his belief that one can only become intimate if one has formed a secure identity in the previous stage in adolescence. Having a secure identity also meant for Erikson that one also developed a sense of “fidelity,” which consists of a set of life-defining principles that one firmly believes in. In middle adulthood, the task of generativity requires one to assume responsibility for the next generation by reaching beyond immediate concerns and by enabling younger people to meet their potential. Finally, in late adulthood, one must come to terms with oneself and the meaning of one's life by looking back at what was accomplished and, in so doing, either experience a positive sense of achievement or a negative feeling of despair. Erikson (1950) believed that the stages are sequential and build on each other. If adults successfully meet the challenges of each stage, they move on to the next stage. If they fail to meet them, they impair the rest of their development and face difficulty in coming to terms with reality and in finding happiness later in life.

The psychiatrist George Vaillant and his colleagues (Vaillant & Vaillant, 1990) found support for Erikson's arguments when they performed a longitudinal study on a group of college students who were followed from the 1940s to the 1980s. They concluded, as Erikson had, that postchildhood stages must be passed through sequentially. Failure to master one of Erikson's stages made it difficult to successfully master subsequent stages. As Erikson had originally argued, Vaillant found that some people never master the identity stage and in a sense become lifelong adolescents. In fact, approximately 15% of the adult participants were still dealing with identity issues in their forties, issues that most individuals master as teenagers.

Beginning in the 1970s, Daniel Levinson, a clinical psychologist at Yale, asserted that adult development can also be described by a series of sequential stages (Levinson, 1978). Levinson's theory, however, is somewhat more detailed than is Erikson's. Levinson's theory was first published in The Seasons of a Man's Life in 1978. At the time of his death in 1994, Levinson was working on a subsequent volume, The Seasons of a Woman's Life, completed after his death by his wife Judy (Levinson & Levinson, 1996). Like Erikson, their conclusions were largely based on interview data. The Levinsons contend from their studies of both men and women that adults evolve through an orderly sequence of stable periods followed by transitional periods that correlate with chronological age. By stable periods, the Levinsons meant that there are periods in which we maintain a pattern of relative stability, clarity, and certainty. The Levinsons contend than an overriding task of adulthood is the creation of a structure for life. Adults, however, periodically evaluate their lives by either creating a new life structure or reappraising an old one. These periods of reappraisal are referred to as transitional periods. The Levinsons described several transitions in their work, but focused primarily on two transitions, one called the “Age 30 Transition,” and a second called the “Midlife Transition,” which occurs around age 40.

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