Your Developmental Stages: Moving from Ignorance toward Wisdom

"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."

Plato

Since a big part of this book concentrates on our lifecycle, it is important that we understand our progression from birth through our entire life span. Understanding the origins of our self-esteem, becoming self-aware, having self-respect, and developing self-acceptance are all part of our growth toward adulthood. Last century, many psychologists labeled adolescence an important stage of development, a stage that creates a bridge between our childhood years and young adulthood. In the twenty-first century, another phase of life seems to be emerging as similarly significant, capturing our interest and expanding our understanding of human potential and development. Middle-age, which starts in our late forties and expands into our mid-seventies, creates a bridge between our early and late adulthood years. The people in this age range are redefining our views of human development. This is the age group that most developmental theories have neglected to study closely, and this book concentrates exclusively on it.

The willingness to move through each stage of our lives is equivalent to the willingness to live fully. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up a familiar but limiting pattern, which might feel uncomfortable at times. But the reward will come later. As Dostoevsky said, "Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most" (Dostoevsky 1886, 96). The courage to move forward and take new steps allows us to let go of each stage by resolving our crises and enter a new stage of life with the potential for finding fresh ideas and richer life experiences.

The stages of development were studied extensively by three developmental psychologists, Erik Erikson (1963), Jean Piaget (1967) and Vygotsky (1978). While they all took different approaches, they all agreed that development is a continuous process of progress through stages, and each stage needs to be mastered successfully in order to move on to the next. Piaget looked upon development as an individual process first occurring within the child, while Vygotsky argued that development is a social process that occurs during social interaction with a person with a higher level of knowledge. He called this interaction "the zone of proximal development." Vygotsky claimed that "What the child can accomplish today with help, she can do alone tomorrow," which means that learning takes place through social interaction. Then, as learning becomes the child's own knowledge, the child internalizes it.

In his book Childhood and Society (1967), Erikson identified eight stages of development. He argued that each stage is characterized by a specific crisis that we need to resolve in order to move on to our next stage successfully. Every stage in our lifecycle has a beginning, a middle, and an end. At the beginning we start with baby steps similar to the ones we took in infancy. As we move on, we are faced with crises and challenges that strengthen our resolve as we learn to navigate our quest for self-fulfillment and wellness.

If we don't overcome our crises at the specific ages when they occur, we will carry the remnants of them into the next stage of our lifecycle, or all our lives, limiting our chances of achieving our fullest potentials (Rogers, 1961). I prefer to call these life crises "turning points" in our lives because they allow us to reflect and reexamine our life's purpose before moving on to our next stage of development.

Erikson (1967) recognized what emerges from the resolution of a crisis, or a turning point, at different stages of our lifecycle: trust, attachment, nurturance, and security during infancy; autonomy and will during early childhood; purpose, creativity, and freedom during play age; industry, competence, and cooperation during school age; identity, commitment, and exploration in adolescence; career, connections, and love in young adulthood; care, self-reflection, self-evaluation, transformation, growth, and compassion in middle adulthood; wisdom and acceptance in old age. Each of these strengths is prefigured at earlier stages, and each is reshaped to address the challenges of later stages.

Infancy

During infancy, we have to establish a trusting, safe, and nurturing relationship with parents and caregivers, but at the same time maintain enough distrust so that we are not left completely unprotected and vulnerable. This safe, nurturing, and trusting environment is a prerequisite for normal development and sets the foundation for the adult personality. If we are unable to develop trust, we will have issues around intimacy, trusting others, and holding on to relationships. We may even having a hard time trusting ourselves. The crisis that we develop...