Recent research and theory on midlife development and the midlife transition is reviewed and integrated into a personality and social systems perspective. This point of view focuses on the analysis of individual midlife personality in social context, the definition of midlife precipitators, developmental tasks, sequential phaselike developments during the midlife transition, and implications for psychopathology. An agenda for the 1980s is proposed that emphasizes a series of research, methodological, and theoretical questions and implications.The authors wish to express their appreciation to Springer Publishing Company for permission to present in this chapter the theoretical material and preliminary data that will be forthcoming in greater detail in a book entitled, Midrife Development: Gender Personality, and Social Systems Influences, scheduled for publication in 1980.
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