Midlife Themes of Invisible Citizens

Abstract

This article reports on a two-part interview study of 23 men and women aged 35 to 45 who held low-profile jobs such as prison inmates and guards, hospital cooks, laundry workers, custodians, resort maids, gardeners, bartenders, and bellmen. A research approach incorporating interview, life study, and oral history methods, mixed open-ended questions with formal inventories such as the Rokeach Value Survey and the KilpatrickCantril self-anchoring scale.

Four common themes emerged from the group. All were hopeful about their futures and most felt that their present lives were better than their past. A majority saw their lives as being strongly influenced by some painful and traumatic life event such as a divorce, death of a loved one, accident, drug addiction, or view of war. The women tended to select relational events when asked for their most significant life events, whereas the men chose public or personal events. All saw themselves as being responsible for their lives. The greatest contributions were the life stories themselves, reminding one of the need to see individuals in the rich context of their separate lives in order to appreciate the logic of their life themes.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Coles, R. , & Coles, J. H. (1978). Women of crisis. New York: Dell.

Cottle, T. J. (1978). Private lives and public accounts. New York: Franklin Watts.

Crumbaugh, J. C. , & Maholick, L. T. (1969). Manual of instructionsfor the purpose in life test. Munster, IN: Psychometric Affiliates.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. , & Beattie, O. V. (1979). Life themes: A theoretical and empirical exploration of their origins and effects. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 19(1), 45-63.

Ferguson, M. (1980). The aquarian conspiracy. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher.

Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and its discontents ( J. Strachey , Ed. and Trans.). New York: Norton. (Original work published 1930)

Hardcastle, B. (1981). Midlife themes of invisible citizens: How ordinary people make sense of their lives. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University.

Hardcastle, B. (1982). Looking into inner worlds: Some thoughts on research. Review Journal of Philosophy & Social Science, 7, 259-269.

Horney, K. (1945). Our inner conflicts. New York: Norton.

10.

Kilpatrick, F. P. , & Cantril, H. (1965). Self-anchoring scaling, a measure of individuals' unique reality worlds. In R. E. Hartley & E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in psychology (3rd ed.). New York: Thomas Crowell.

11.

Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. New York: Norton.

12.

Levinson, D. J. (1978). The seasons of a man's life. New York: Random House.

13.

Rokeach, M. (1967). Value survey. Sunnyvale, CA: Halgren Tests.

14.

Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

15.

Rubin, L. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family. New York: Basic Books.

16.

Sennett, R. , & Cobb, J. (1973). The hidden injuries of class. New York: Random House.

17.

Sheehy, G. (1977). Passages. New York: Bantam Books.

18.

Sidel, R. (1978). Urban survival. Boston: Beacon.

19.

Terkel, S. (1972). Working. New York: Random House.

20.

Terman, L. M. , & Oden, M. H. (1959). The group at midlife: Genetic studies of genius (Vol. 5). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

21.

Vaillant, G. E. (1977). Adaptation to life: How the best and the brightest came of age. Boston: Little, Brown.