Adult Development csv Flashcards
In childhood we’re focused with_
Mastery of the raisin task. Like can you regard the raisin and then pinch the raisin and then spontaneously drop the box of raisins. But the rungs of the lader stop at 6 years when development is presumed to be “complete.” But what can we think about in adulthood?
The core milestones that we progress through are:
We spiral from ourselves OUTWARD by building our ability to: (1) LOVE (2) WORK (3) CARE
Common principles of adult development
Separation followed by Individuation followed by Integration. So you separate from your family to define yourself and then come back redefined. There are many cycles of stability and of change. And you have to work at multiple spheres at once (your life, your job, your relationship). MENTORS can have a big impact!
Social Theorists
(1) Freud: love and work are the cornerstones of humanness (2) Erikson: 8 stages of man (3)*** LEVINSON: 4 seasons and emphasized DREAMS and how they PULL US from stage to stage where dreams are the imagined self (becoming a doctor) combined with imagined reality (what it’s like to be a doctor) bumping up against reality (what it’s really like the be in med school, etc)…. when reality doesn’t match our expectations we have to work on REMODELING our notions of reality and our MENTORS help us do this. (4) Gilligan: talked about how females might develop to focus on caring while males develop to focus on fairness and that their is right or wrong but there are two paths we should consider (5) Jung: talked about ARCHETYPES like the great mother, the hero, etc that we see in stories across time (6) Campbell: the universal MONOMYTH or the HERO’s JOURNEY
***Campbell and the Hero’s Journey
Journey starts with the call. Like you get the idea that you should go into medicine. In myths a fairy or something delivers the calling but in the real world its andy welch telling you got in to med school. Then you pass into the realm of the unknown (Levinson would say that the DREAM hits REALITY). Hopefully your dream isn’t crushed. Meet some people that are MENTORS. At some point you hit an ABYSS where you feel like this is it/you don’t know what you want to do/things are too hard etc. But you’ll make it…you’ll finish residency etc. But then there is the RETURN (you are a different person with different relationships etc) and you need to go back to your family/town and re-integrate.
Focus on 3 of Eriksons’ Stages
(1) Intimacy vs. Isolation (2) Career Consolidation vs. Self-Absorption (3) Generativity (where you take your life experience and give BACK as a mentor for others) vs. Stagnation
Intimacy vs. Isolation
This stage occurs in our 20-30’s. What is intimacy as defined by Erikson? It is a human relationship that involves DIALOGUE, TRANSPARENCY, VULNERABILITY, and RECIPROCITY. We want to find commitment without losing our idea of self autonomy: this is the big INTRAPSYCHIC challenge. In our culture we achieve this through trial and error and our parents’ relationship is largely a role model for what we expect relationships should be. Failure in this stage can result in self-absorption.
Career consolidation vs. Self Absorption
This stage occurs in our 20-40’s. The task is commitment to a specific field of work and transforming a job into a CAREER. You know you have a career when you have the 4 C’s: (1) commitment, which has to be RECIPROCAL (you commit to the job and the job commits to you) (2) compensation (3) contentment (4) competence: you develop a sense of mastery. The method to obtain career consolidation starts with (1) Formation of a dream (2) Finding a MENTOR (3) Commiting while maintaing a sense of autonomy (4) Gender differences show up here as women are balancing child bearing and rearing and the tension of home responsibilities. While success here is having a successful career, failure is both lack of internal security about self and external security about how to support yourself and your family.
Generativity vs. Stagnation
This stage occurs in our 40-60’s. Our tasks here include accpeting death (realizing death will come but continuing to want to give back to the world), desiring WISDOM over power, now ACTING AS A MENTOR for others, being socialized over sexualized (you’re more interested in being part of community events than finding people to go out on dates with). Our methods for doing this include finding people that want to be mentored, identifying what you value, rebuilding and reworking things that were stagnant for a long time or that necessitate change based on lifes’ progression etc. Failure here is characterized by a MID LIFE CRISIS and CHRONIC DEPRESSION which force you go to back down a few rungs on the ladder to rework your intimate relationships or rework your career.
What about late life development?
The aging population is the FASTEST GROWING SEGMENT of our population. Know that there is the greatest VARIABILITY (or standard deviation from the mean) in how a person looks and acts in the later years of life. As you get older, people look more and more different and chronological age is LESS RELEVANT.
Rowe and Kahn on successful aging
(1) Absence of disease (2) Engagement with life (3) Preserved cognitive and physical function
The New England Centenarians
80% are women!. 50% have first degree relatives who also reached very old age: significant GENETIC component. They are rarely obese, handle stress well, rarely smoke.
Are intrinsic or extrinsic factors more important?
While genetics definitely matters, the modifiable/extrinisc factors are most important: exercise, diet, coping with stress, social support, creativity, spirituality; it is also really important to ACCEPT WHERE YOU ARE. It has been shown that people who have heart surgery do better if they have social and spiritual support systems in place; significant reduction in mortality. Whereas if you’re depressed, your 3.5x more likely to die after an MI.
Harvard study of freshman boys - followed up every 2 years to determine commonalities.
Predictors of well being at ages 70-80 determined before age 50 include: humor, ability to anticipate, ABSENCE fo depression, warm marriage, absence of smoking and alcohol abuse
Psychosocial transitions and Neugarten: on time vs. off time life events
On time: anticipated like your husband has been sick for a long time. Off time: totally not anticipated (like spouse dying in a car crash or death of a child). When you do lose someone you love, PROBLEM FOCUSED therapy (figuring out what CAN BE changed in the situation) is more effective than emotion focused.
