Am I Old Yet?

An Update

William Sundwick

Warp & Woof has seen other pieces about getting old. It seems I owe the reader an update from time to time. I am now mid-way through my fifth year of retirement.

I wouldn’t contest the rationale for my exit from the Library of Congress after 42 years – the decision was a sound one, backed by sound reasoning. The retirement adventure began with excitement and enthusiasm in 2015. I was getting out before I got old. This was good. The first thing I noticed was what an incredible relief it was to sleep in every morning. (I am not a lark by nature, but an owl.)

As time passed, the distance increased from the institution I had served for the bulk of my life. I went back only once, within the first year after retiring – for a tour with our neighbors and their then seven-year-old grandson. He was impressed; me not so much.

By now, I can safely say that I’ve retained absolutely no knowledge of the things which qualified me for my highest-level position, and my status at the Library. It’s telling that I’ve written only one post in Warp & Woof about anything I learned from a career at the Library of Congress!

My wife’s situation is different. She still works there, in an analogous position to mine. We’ve discussed her retirement decision process using the same criteria I used in making my 2014 decision. It doesn’t work for her, since she has something I lacked – deep personal friendships with some of her colleagues. Even Facebook friends carried over from work are now fading from my active interest. Apparently, my professional life was rather shallow compared to hers.

My credo is “don’t look back” – that 42-year career is no different from my ancient childhood memories of growing up in Flint, Michigan. Nothing is forever.

Other social outlets have become suitable substitutes for whatever I lost from my professional relationships at the Library. There’s church, community, and my Writers’ Group. Then, there are my kids – and grandkids – all local still!

I am also fortunate that no major health concerns have emerged (yet). I find that good habits regarding fitness and diet do seem to pay dividends. Practicing good habits is the best way to do maintenance as we get older, even if gym memberships don’t necessarily constitute social engagement.

While some interests from earlier phases of life (even the first couple of post-retirement years) have waned – sex, cars, and computer/software geekery among them – others have emerged, like politics, philosophy, and popular music, seen as art. I feel my mind is still active; I read lots, listen to podcasts, and continue to write for this blog. I am immensely grateful for time spent with my two sons, and the grandkids. Babysitting is a joy!

So, when do I get old? Could it be when I become more absorbed with my legacy than my life? I don’t spend much time with that perennial question: “Will anybody miss me when I’m gone?” Ultimately, it doesn’t matter since I won’t be here to know. And memories are different from “missing” someone, anyway. But we do all have legacies.

I suspect mine will be divided between the concrete legacy (financial, educational, values transmitted to offspring) and the abstract legacy (impact on strangers and unborn generations). I can see evidence of the concrete legacy every day, but the abstract variety is more elusive. The latter might make me wonder what I was doing for 42 years at one of the world’s foremost cultural institutions. Screw it! Hardly anybody deserves the privilege to worry about those things, right? I’m not ready yet to spend time justifying my legacy, either variety, as “good.” Leave that for others to judge.

So, if I’m not old yet because I don’t worry about my legacy, am I maybe starting to get tired? The answer is both yes and no. As noted above, sleep is a motivator -- perhaps even more now than five years ago? But when awake I can usually still engage in lively conversation on any number of issues. I believe I have no difficulty getting people to understand what I’m saying. People, in general, are never tiresome – although my grandchildren can be very tiring!

A final indicator of being old might be the role dreams play in my life. Are they still there? I must confess to a “new boredom” at times. Much of what sparked my imagination in times past only elicits a “meh,” or yawn, now. Perhaps I need to find new emotional stimuli? Cultural conditioning is a constraint here in my response to art. I always look to younger folks (like my kids) for help in this area. Millennials are still the best interlocutors for art appreciation.

Whether I decide to define myself as old or not, there remain the Erik Erikson developmental stages of life. I am now wrestling with stage 8, “Integrity vs. Despair” – working full-time on the complete integration of my personality. This is the final act. I’m waiting only for stage 9, the hypothetical one suggested just before the Eriksons’ deaths, where everything rewinds back to the beginning!

I should be asking myself if there is anyone I missed – any debts I still owe? Are there still some opportunities to exploit? And, if I’m truly old, I need to start prioritizing what to do with the time left. Should I start leaving Post-It notes? “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep” – Robert Frost.

Apologia to Erik Erikson

William Sundwick

Yes, Erikson’s Eight stages of psychosocial development does have a sort of poetic elegance, as I wrote two weeks ago in this blog, but I fear I was in over my head. My ground rules for Warp & Woof specified that it would not be scholarly. The main reason is that I don’t have the “cred” to write an academic critique, or knowledgeable review, of very many scholarly subjects. Major theories of ego development, like Erikson’s, clearly fall into this category. It is now time to retract some of the assertions I made in that piece two weeks ago … and, hopefully, clarify the rationale I had for writing it in the first place.

First, a quick recap, here are the eight stages, in table form:

Tension	Virtue	Generalized age group
Trust vs. distrust	Hope	Infancy
Autonomy vs. shame, doubt	Will	Toddler, pre-school
Initiative vs. guilt	Purpose	Pre-school, early childhood
Industry vs. inferiority	Competence	Middle childhood, “tweens”
Identity vs. role confusion	Fidelity	Adolescence
Intimacy vs. isolation	Love	Late adolescence, early adulthood
Generativity vs. stagnation	Care	Middle adulthood, middle age
Ego integrity vs. despair	Wisdom	Old age

Superficially, the table says everything I know about Erikson’s eight stages! They were first laid out in his seminal 1950 work, Childhood and Society. All his subsequent work was based upon this first book. I certainly have not made any extensive study of the literature of child psychology, much less ego development in psychoanalysis. But, further research has given me a bit more insight into Erikson (good academic, biographical piece here), but surely does not bestow any authority to my writing.

As I wrote in the conclusion of my earlier piece (p.2), Erikson, himself, tried to mollify his critics by disclaiming any prescriptive value for psychoanalysis of his theoretical structure. Any attempt I made to explain these stages by giving examples from my own life, or people I have “known”, is deserving of serious caution, if not outright retraction. I believe I was guilty of considerable hubris, even intellectual dishonesty, in my presumption that I knew what I was talking about!

Instead, I’d prefer to focus on the literary value of Erikson’s language. That was what inspired my title, “The Poetic Elegance of Erik Erikson“, and that is what has driven my fascination with the structure over nearly fifty years (I took my Developmental Psych course in Winter Quarter, 1969, at Kalamazoo College). If one were engaged in writing a novel, or a play, or long form poetry, what pool of understanding would they use in creating their characters? And, what sort of plot would these characters find themselves immersed in?

It seems to me that, were I such an author, a framework much like the one presented by Erikson would serve as my raw material. (I frankly don’t know enough interesting people … or, at least, don’t know enough about them … to say my fictional characters would come from personal life experience). But, of course, I’m not an author of fiction, any more than I am a psychoanalyst!

The beauty of Erikson’s language is that you really can feel the dialectical tension in each of these stages, especially when you draw upon a personal understanding of the definitions of those virtues. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to understand, but only a philosopher; or, perhaps, just a semi-literate, sentient human being.

Then, there’s the tricky problem of resolutions for each of these tensions. I confess, my lack of knowledge of the literature handicaps me here. I’m not sure I can quite grasp the important precept that resolving these conflicts throughout life should be seen as a continuous struggle … not, as I asserted in my original piece, something akin to advancing from one grade in school to the next, after completing some predetermined requirements. It seems I missed the boat on this. It deserves a full retraction. We’re all likely to revisit these struggles throughout life, there’s NEVER a resolution you can count on! Erikson defines life’s challenges as crises.  But, these crises can appear and reappear many times in an individual’s life. You’re never safe … not until you’ve completed that ninth stage, as hypothesized by Joan Erikson. It all sounds like the old Russian proverb: “First you’re born, then you suffer, then you die.”

Only after exploring the nuance, and interaction, of all the stages, can we say we’ve come to the real message of the Eight Stages. Its true poetic elegance and beauty is its portrait of the pathos of a life lived fully. We should all see our lives thus. The ultimate reward may be yet to come. Next chapter: the last works of both Erik and wife Joan Erikson, “Vital Involvement in Old Age” and “The Life Cycle Completed”; I must read them, before I write about them! 

Sometimes, it's the old guys who are needed to get the job done. Here is a case illustrating Erik Erikson's batle between "ego integrity" and "despair". This Texas PBS commentator was 70 years old, not worried about job security, only about personal integrity!

Poetic Elegance of Erik Erikson, p.2

                                                     (continued from p.1)

5.   Tension: identity vs. role confusion (virtue = “fidelity”) … the big adolescent tension, who am I? But, don’t we all continue to be confronted throughout life with choices of roles – me vs. not me?  The literature in the sixties often spoke of gender orientation as a good example of a crisis which could cause a fall back to an earlier stage, unable to successfully resolve a “nonconforming” gender/sexual orientation due to social pressure. That’s less of an issue today, but perhaps not totally absent, yet, in certain segments of society. But, don’t we often have demands placed upon us, by some compelling authority, which simply DO NOT FIT who we feel we are. If that leads to job change, there could be a snowball effect with livelihood, family, community, etc. … all leading to a throwback to an earlier stage. I believe I had such an experience with teaching, in my youthful exuberance after college, which led to my moving to the DC area, and back to Stage 3 or 4.

6.   Tension: intimacy vs. isolation (virtue = “love”) … ahhh, the memories! The loneliness of late adolescence (i.e., the horniness!). I’m sure I don’t need to say anything more about this tension to any divorced, or widowed, adult! Loss of an intimate partner can surely propel one backwards to an earlier, more comfortable, resolved, stage of development – stage 5, at least! Fortunately, I have not had such an experience (yet), but I can imagine the devastation I would feel at the loss of my wife of 34 years.

7.    Tension: generativity vs. stagnation (virtue = “care”) … those of us who think we’ve successfully resolved this tension, know that it (and all the previous stages) must have resolution before achieving the final virtue of “wisdom”. We know about the pandemic of “career burnout”, taking away the sense of achievement in your career. That even had an impact on my own retirement decision, when I felt I had done all the damage I could to the institution! But, then I found that I had to establish new “retirement competencies” (Stage 4?), like writing a blog! And, isn’t failure to secure “caring” one of the leading causes of divorce (i.e., stagnation)?

8.   Tension: ego integrity vs. despair (virtue = “wisdom”) … yes, here we are, today. Despair is also described in some of Erikson’s writing as “disgust”: that is, self-disgust. The central question is really: have I been a good person? I Can’t help but wonder where our President is in this stage of psychosocial development, now … also, isn’t intellectual honesty part of the picture? Do I really believe what I say, or write? Readers may speculate …

I only discovered in researching Erikson’s eight stages that, shortly before her death twenty years ago, at age 93, Joan Erikson published an article which postulated a ninth stage of psychosocial development, she characterized it as something which happens mostly to people who live as long as she, and it encapsulates all previous eight stages, but inverted … unwinding, as it were! Until, ultimately, one is left with Distrust vs. Trust … when you realize that, in the end, you are clearly alone and abandoned! Perhaps religious beliefs may help to counteract this realization, at least historically: discussion, debate?

Erikson’s influence has grown since the 1960s, until now, when the “Eight Stages …” are fundamental components of any understanding of developmental psychology. Like many psychosocial theories, Erikson’s has both supporters and detractors. He acknowledged that his theory was more descriptive than predictive, certainly not prescriptive, but it still stands on its own as a beautifully balanced portrait of an idealized lifespan, truly elegant in its structure, and its language. He uses the term “epigenesis” to describe his theory, “beyond genetics”. The critics tend to focus on his lack of prescriptive therapeutic practice. But, to this student, at least, the expansion beyond Freud’s emphasis on the id is seminal. It allows us to see psychosocial development as a life-long process, not something which is completed in adolescence -- Freud’s “genital” stage of development. Although, Erikson’s entry point was adolescent psychology (hence, my early fascination?), it is the life-encompassing nature of the theory that generates its “poetic elegance.”

Poetic Elegance of Erik Erikson, p.1

The Poetic Elegance of Erik Erikson: An Homage to the “Eight Stages …”

William Sundwick

Eight stages of psychosocial development -- such a pedestrian name for such an influential theory. But, the language and vitality of its dialectical tension has resonated with me ever since I was first introduced, in my undergraduate Developmental Psych class, 47 years ago. 

In a nutshell, Erikson (Erik, a German immigrant, and his wife and collaborator, Joan) took the concept of Hegelian dialectic (thesis à antithesis à synthesis) and constructed with it a general architecture of personality development throughout life. Influenced by Freud’s ideas about development of the id and superego, Erikson built his model, instead, around ego development.

When I was first exposed, I had already captured, from earlier philosophy courses, a similar Hegelian (even Marxian?) world view. Continuous struggle was the theme. Instead of one great reward at the end of a single monumental struggle, however, Erikson posited eight sequentially ordered struggles, resolution of one leading only to the next, with each of them having a characteristic tension, and acquisition of a labeled virtue to mark successful transition to the next struggle, up the hierarchy. Each was built upon all the preceding. This orderly structure for personality development always appealed to me. It had an aesthetic, a poetic elegance to it.

For some reason, even though I never pursued teaching as a career, despite it being my intent at the time, the language of the relational dialectics, which wouldn’t be named until the 1980s, and the description of the “virtues” at the successful completion of each stage, have always stuck with me. I’ve negotiated each successive stage’s tensions, in my mind … from ego identity, in those days, through intimacy vs. isolation; generativity vs. stagnation; and, now, I believe, integrity vs. despair.

The dialectical struggle at each stage of my own life has been palpable.

What I didn’t grasp in my youth, though, was another central theme in the theory: there is often retrograde motion as we plow through life … what may appear to be resolved doesn’t necessarily stay resolved! The role of crisis is fundamental to understanding Erikson.

While clearly something like the layers of an onion, Erikson’s writing strongly suggests that crisis floats around chronologically, each stage is not fixed to particular age ranges. He arrived at the age brackets for each stage only as statistical norms. We should always expect outliers, within one or two standard deviations. And, we should remember that he, and wife Joan, always felt that people, in times of personal crisis, would often revisit an earlier, comfortably resolved, tension later in life. External events, stressors, can throw you back, perhaps even to the very earliest stage of development, characteristic of infants! Nevertheless, the basic theory asserts that successful resolution of one stage generally advances to successfully resolving the next stage, like advancing a grade in school!

Fair enough, despite the uneven progress that many of us follow, as we negotiate through all life’s crises, large and small. Let’s look at each of the eight stages, and think of our own experiences with child rearing, or our own development through life crises. It really DOES make sense, and I will illustrate some throwback crises people close to me have experienced. The reader may easily recognize other situations. Each stage is identified by its distinctive tension, and the resolution virtue is identified in parentheses:

       1. Tension: trust vs. distrust (virtue = “hope”) … think what impact abandonment could have on an infant; but, then, what about extreme survival situations in adulthood? Perhaps failure, in such a crisis, to rely on hope, would result in death? It strikes a chord, doesn’t it? “Abandon Hope, all Ye Who Enter …”

2. Tension: autonomy vs. shame and doubt (virtue = “will”) … we think of emergence into toddlerhood from infancy (mobility and language), but what about an adult who has their livelihood stripped from them? Or, crippling disease, like Parkinson’s? Was it their fault? What shame must they feel at becoming totally dependent, once again, on others? I experienced this with my mother, who declined over her last years (almost 12 years, as I recall) little by little, from Parkinson’s, until at the end of her life, she was entirely immobile, in a skilled nursing facility, dependent on aides for all daily functions, yet still sentient, still able to talk … with a fainter and fainter vocalization ability, then one day she simply stopped breathing. It was her only release from the prison of her body.

3. Tension: initiative vs. guilt (virtue = “purpose”) … now that I have “will”, when can I use it safely? What can I get away with? Who doesn’t know this tension as an adult? I won’t elaborate, due to my desire to avoid self-incrimination … but, think of how you feel when you get caught! What if getting caught were to lead to prison time? To what stage would be beat your safest retreat?

4. Tension: industry vs. inferiority (virtue = “competence”) … although Erikson characterized this as the dominant tension among school age children, on into adolescence, don’t most of us have a gnawing feeling of incompetence through most of our professional lives? Or, for that matter, as a homeowner, or a parent, or a cook? While many of us will grow to accept that there are some things we just can’t do as well as other things, there may be cases where later progress through stages 5 -8 may have seemed assured, until suddenly one is confronted with a failure to perform competently in a life role where they have become accustomed to success. I’m reminded of the difficulty many older employees at my agency faced with new technology. Jobs which they performed perfectly well prior to the introduction of new digital technologies became impossible for them once typewriters, or word processors, or card catalogs, disappeared. I was a librarian for many years at the Library of Congress, and saw a wave of retirements, some premature, among this group back in the eighties and nineties. If they stayed on the job, many retreated to Stage 3, where they filled their time with less demanding tasks. I chose to reinvent my job, to become an IT specialist, perhaps merely a cover for a similar retreat!

   (continued in next post, p.2)