For the last 5 years I have been living with 94 adults. These 94 adults made up the sample of people in a study on adult development that Dale Dannefer and I began in 1980. This book represents my efforts to condense the almost 200 hours of tape-recorded material from the 94 adults into a form that captures at least some of the diversity and also some of the commonalities in their answers to the ques tion "Who am I?" My version of their answers is based on their reflections about themselves as family members, workers, and people with a goal in life. In arriv ing at the conclusion that adults...

Through the research on which this book reports, we have been given the unique opportunity to explore the complex nature of two of the most important issues in the lives of adults: identity and intimacy. It is with deep gratitude that we give credit to the 80 individuals in our sample who allowed us to explore these processes in their lives. Our purpose in writing this book was, in some ways, a modest one. Both of us believed that research on the Eriksonian concept of intimacy was deficient in that it was limited to the reports of individuals about them- selves. We maintained that this kind...

The objective of this book is to provide information that will be useful to people in a variety of disciplines who wish to learn more about normal aging processes in the human body. Although gerontologists in the biological sciences are making great strides in research on human aging and documenting this work in mono graphs, texts, and review chapters, this information is generally not easily acces sible nor is it comprehensible to nonprofessionals in these fields. This book is intended to provide a summary of this work, along with its implications for psy chological functioning of the aging...