The Seasons of Life

In Colin Milner's interview of David Wolfe, author of Ageless Marketing, he asks Wolfe, "How does personality development lead to changes in our behavior over time?"

Mr. Wolfe responds, "Our basic needs are determined by the season of life in which we live. We pass through four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. Each season has a primary developmental objective, survival focus and characteristic life story theme."

Here is how he defines each season of life:

1. Spring - this season prepares us for adulthood. The survival focus is play, because that is nature's device for enticing the young into modeling life and trying things. The life story theme is fantasy: everything will ultimately work in a person's favor.
2. Summer - the primary objective here is development of the social and vocational self. The survival focus is becoming someone, which is usually dependent on showing promise to others; thus, everything we do has that in mind-from what we wear to how we dress, the friends we keep and the activities we do. We subordinate much of ourselves to the external world to increase our opportunities for securing the social integration that makes us successful in relationships, and for gains in social status, getting jobs, job promotions and so on. The life story theme in summer is romantic, heroic: I can do anything I set my mind to.
3. Fall - this is the season that us midlifers are in. The primary objective is development of the inner self. As we come to the end of summer, we may feel empty because either we haven't done what we thought we were going to do or we have done even more, yet still feel empty. We now turn inward to perhaps examine our life purpose in a quest for fulfillment. The survival focus in fall or midlife is about being somebody. Becoming somebody has become less important than being somebody. This shift from an outer world focus to an inner self focus accounts for the infamous midlife crisis. We hear the inner voice knocking, saying, "Let me out!" But, we get confused as to what to do about it.
4. Winter - this is the final stage of psychological maturity. Our survival focus is reconciliation-making peace with it all. We begin to look at life retrospectively to make more sense of it, seeking to resolve the yin and the yang of life, the sweet and the bitter. We may ultimately conclude that there is usually a bit of good in every bad and vice versa, and thus find the peacefulness in our souls that we have long sought.

Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Wolfe's definition of each of the seasons of life?