0.11 Erik erikson  (Page 18/26)

Adulthood, however, means different things in different cultures. In Adulthood (Erikson, 1978), Erikson brought together a collection of authors who examined adulthood from a variety of cultural perspectives. For a Christian adult, growth occurs primarily through social experiences. One encounters Christ in service to others, or in other words, by loving your neighbor. Christ himself serves as the model for adulthood (Bouwsma, 1978). Adulthood in Islam carries with it responsibility for the religious commands and obligations of Islam. One must reconcile the reality of the world with one’s place in it, as willed by Allah. Adulthood then becomes an expression of the inner peace achieved by living in the world in accord with the divinely revealed reality (Lapidus, 1978). In the Confucian tradition, adulthood is the complete process of becoming a person. In this patriarchal model, first a man comes of age, then he marries and has children, then he begins a career as a scholar-official, and that career is expected to be served with distinction (Wei-Ming, 1978). In Japan, adulthood is a time of social responsibility, discipline, and perseverance, in preparation for the integrity and respect typically associated with old age (Rohlen, 1978). India presents a particularly difficult challenge, and it is not really possible to speak of a single adulthood model. The caste system inherent in the India of the past created vastly different life conditions for the people of India (Rudolph&Rudolph, 1978). The problems of language and multicultural populations create unique difficulties for understanding adulthood in Russia and America (Jordan, 1978; Malia, 1978). What is clear across cultures is that adulthood is a time of continued development, it can vary quite dramatically (even within a culture), and it often involves an aspect of anticipating old age. The anticipation of old age, however, can vary dramatically, based on individual and cultural attitudes about old age, as we will see in the next section.

Adulthood can be the most productive and, in some ways, most gratifying years of life. Some of the unique challenges of adulthood have become popular topics in psychology, such as the midlife crisis and the empty nest syndrome. And yet, adulthood is the least studied period of life. One possible explanation for this neglect, according to Smelser (1980a), is that most research is done by adults, and they tend to be more interested in stages of development other than their own. In a second collection of articles, entitled Themes of Work and Love in Adulthood (Smelser&Erikson, 1980), Smelser and Erikson brought together a variety of perspectives on what they viewed as two of the most important life phenomena that dominate the adulthood years. Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said that maturity is to be found in the capacity to love and to work. Throughout one’s life, both of these phenomena follow certain paths, typically involving a period of growing interest and ability, followed by a fairly stable level (which typically lasts for decades), followed by a gradual (as in work) or sudden (as in the death of a spouse) decline (Smelser, 1980a). In examining the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, evident in their letters to one another, Erikson (1980b) found distinctly adult content related to such topics as mutual regard, confidence, affection, intimate concern for their families, both good and bad observations regarding their professional colleagues, and an ongoing debate regarding the important issues in psychodynamic theory and the psychoanalytic movement. There are similarities, but some interesting contrasts, between these letters and the ones Freud had written to Wilhelm Fliess years earlier. In that younger period of adulthood, Freud seemed more in need of a close friend, particularly since he was in the process of creating the field that was becoming well-established by the time Freud met Jung. Perhaps due to Freud being older when he met Jung, it seems that he interacted with Fliess and Jung in different ways: when Freud was young he interacted with his colleague Fliess as a colleague, but when he was older he interacted with Jung in a much more father-son type relationship (and Jung had lost his father years earlier).