Phases of man, revisited

Back in July of 2007 I commented on the strange fact that research/teaching of the human development seemed lacking once the teens were out of the way and we were sent off into adulthood.

After a late session last night trying desperately in vain to get Microsoft SharePoint to recover a database so that it can be upgraded to MOSS I started to StumbleUpon around the world web. One of the pages I came across was aimed at answering the gap in my "phases of man" knowledge.

CulturalAnalysis.com's page, Basic Characteristics of Life Development Stages, has a human life split into 4 major phases:

1. Growth (0-19)
2. Conflict (19-40)
3. Maturity (40-60)
4. Resolution (60-75+)

Each of these stages is further split into sub-phases:

1. Awareness
2. Learning
3. Application
4. Transformation

So, to take the phase I currently fit into, Maturity-Awareness (40-43), being a glorious 41 on March 11th (or am I?), they have this paragraph:

This is a nuanced, experienced, and edited version of the individual at 23. Depending on the degree of change necessary to bring the mature self into alignment, this process can be dramatic or simple. The final shakeout will fall back to more nuanced preferences confirmed at 23.

Interesting.

Oh, and it's interesting to see who CulturalAnalysis are and what they do:

• Cultural Studies & Analysis is a think tank that decodes how consumers determine value in products, concepts, and ideas.
• Our area expertise is the consumer - what they need, how they know it, and how they recognize products that fill that need when they see them.
• Our research identifies those elements that cue value and drive consumer choice to define the universe in which the buy decision is made.
• Outcomes describe what the optimal choices must look like in order for consumers to recognize them as valuable at a pre-conscious level.

So they're a consumer marketing company. Nothing wrong with that at all ... but it's a tad disturbing to know that they are doing all this research into what man is like (and when I say "man" I mean "you") but it isn't whhat is taught wider in relevant schools and courses.

Of course I could be wrong and way out of date with over simplifications galore.
Leave a comment if you know more ...

And to round this off here's part 4 of the BBC4 series, The Century of the Self (1, 2 and 3) which inquires into the psychotherapy 'public persuasion' industry that grew from Sigmund Freud's work during the 20th century and now dominates the USA culture and is seeping out further and further.

I first discovered this series in October when I was watching a true conspiracy theory/the truth about the London Bombings