Daniel Levinson

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Daniel J. Levinson was one of the founders of the field of Positive Adult Development. He was born in New York City on May 28, 1920. He completed his dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1947, on the measurement of ethnocentrism. In 1950, he moved to Harvard University. He was involved the Harvard Psychological Clinic, led by Henry Murray, and the Department of Social Relations, where he worked with colleagues such as Erik Erikson, Robert White, Talcott Parsons, Gordon Allport, and Alex Inkeles. For 1966 to 1990, he was a professor of psychology at Yale University School of Medicine. His work on positive adult development built upon that of Erik Erikson, Elliott Jaques, and Bernice Neugarten.

His two most important and famous books were Seasons of a man’s life and Seasons of a woman’s life. These are highly influential even now. He was multidisciplinarily oriented. His work on his Life Structure account of adult development reflects that approach. Through a series of intensive interviews with men (1978) and women (1987), Levinson proposed an account based on a series of periods that adults may go through as they develop. During some of the shifts, people went through crises, for example a midlife crisis. At the center of his theory is the life structure, the underlying pattern of an individual's life at any particular time. An individual's life structure is shaped by the social and physical environment. He found that many individuals' life structures primarily involve family and work. Some others variables including religion, race, and economic status were often important. Levinson's four "seasonal cycles" include preadulthood, early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood.

Daniel Levinson died on April 12, 1994 in New Haven, Connecticut. His wife Judy Levinson carried on his work.

[edit] Bibliography

Levinson, D. J., with Darrow, C. N, & Klein, E. B. (1978). Seasons of a man's life. New York: Random House.
Levinson, D. J., with Levinson, J. D. (1966). Seasons of a woman's life. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.