Vaillant’s Contribution To Research And Theory Of Adult Development

Abstract

Vaillant’s recent synthesis of the findings of three longitudinal studies on aging adds new insights to our theories of adult development. These insights provide us with new sets of variables for quasi-experimental and even descriptive studies of successful aging. His frame of reference is fundamentally Erikson’s to which he adds two stages, Career Consolidation and Keeper of the Meaning. He arrived at his model inductively over years of qualitative and quantitative longitudinal observations.