| Increasing numbers of people in the United States are living into their seventies and eighties. By the year 2000 half the population will be over 40. While human development in childhood and adolescence has been extensively studied, the same cannot be said for adult development. There is an urgent need to develop a theory of adult psychological development. This study attempts to initate such a theory.;Recents works by Erikson, Vaillant, Gould, and Levinson is examined. Their findings support Jung's earlier theories, without going into his depth. Jung, more than any other theorist before or since, offers a comprehensive theory of adult psychological development. His work is analyzed at length. Some of his major concepts may be summarized as follows: (1) The goal of life is self realization or individuation. (2) The road to self-realization is to be found within the person. (3) Man must learn to listen to his unconscious, which is the source of meaning. The techniques which facilitate this process are examined. (4) The unconscious is essentially religious, and contains both good and evil. (5) Man is the bearer of culture, and the primary source of societal change, rather than vice versa. (6) The process of individual change is dialectical, and synthesis is the result of interaction between the forces of the ego, and the personal and collective unconscious. (7) Man has choice in this process. He can open himself to his unconscious, or deny it. (8) During the mid-lfe transition the individual often begins to raise anew questions concerning his identify and future direction. A new relationship to the masculine and feminine (anima/animus). Principles within and between individuals often emerges as a significant aspects of this transition period. (9) Jung agrees with Freud and other major theorists that the aim of the first half of life is to love, work, and pursue knowledge as part of a natural process. What he adds is that there is a distinct second stage of life in which there is the possibility of further development which is not "natural" but "cultural", and which requires choice on the part of the individual for the process to occur. This second stage centers around meaning, values, understanding, and wisdom. Failure to embrace this second stage results in either physical or psychological illness on the one hand, or shallowness and second childishness on the other. Where he differs from the humanists is in the notion of the shadow aspect of man - that man must encounter the evil in himself and integrate it along with the good in this inner process toward the goal of "wholeness".;Jung saw the process of individuation not only as a protection against mass society, but as a process which can only occur in the second half of life. He therefore places the adult, and in consequence adult education, at the very center of social and cultural development.;This study takes the major concepts of developmental theorists beginning with Sigmond Freud and adds the major concepts of C. G. Jung as they relate to development in the second half of life, thus providing the basis for a life-long theory of adult developmental psychology.;The one thinker in the history of psychology who argued that development in the second half of life was not only significantly different from development in the first half of life, but even more important, was Carl C. Jung. His work has been largely ignored. This study analyzes his work as a theory of adult psychological development. |
