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The search for fulfillment: revolutionary new research that reveals the secret
to long-term happiness, by Susan Krauss Whitbourne

Article in The Journal of Positive Psychology · January 2012

DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2011.614825

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The search for fulfillment: revolutionary new research

that reveals the secret to long-term happiness, by
Susan Krauss Whitbourne
a
Haulie Dowd
a
School of Psychology, NUI , Galway , Ireland
Published online: 20 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Haulie Dowd (2012) The search for fulfillment: revolutionary new research that reveals the secret to
long-term happiness, by Susan Krauss Whitbourne, The Journal of Positive Psychology: Dedicated to furthering research and
promoting good practice, 7:1, 72-74, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2011.614825

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 The Journal of Positive Psychology
Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2012, 72–74
BOOK REVIEW
The search for fulfillment: revolutionary new research
that reveals the secret to long-term happiness, by Susan
Krauss Whitbourne, New York, Ballintine Books,
2010, 224 pp., US $16.99, ISBN 978-0-345-49999-8
The search for fulfillment, by Susan Krauss
Whitbourne, presents an overview of a longitudinal
research project (Whitbourne, Sneed, & Sayer, 2009)
which examines the development of 182 individuals
over the course of 40 years through the lens of Erik
Erikson’s model of psychosocial development. This is a
fascinating book that brings Erikson’s theory into
sharp focus by reference to concrete and specific cases
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of adult development.
Although Erikson began his career as a neo-
Freudian, over time, he began to see the limitations
of Freud’s view. Freud had focused largely on early
development with a particular interest in psychosexual
development. Indeed, the process of psychosocial
adaptation was not of particular interest to Freud,
nor was adult development generally. Erikson, on the
other hand, posited that it may be useful to focus on
the psychosocial challenges of human development and
he later proposed a lifespan theory of psychosocial
development. Erikson (1968) outlined an influential
eight-stage theory of development which described
various life tasks and psychosocial conflicts and
transitions from birth to old age. Erikson believed
that successful negotiation of psychosocial crises at
earlier stages of development was critical for success at
later stages of psychosocial development. Successful
development sees a series of interdependent strengths
or virtues emerging across the lifespan – hope,
willpower, purpose, competency, fidelity, love, care
and wisdom.
To provide one example of a crisis, Erikson
famously posited an ‘identity crisis’ in adolescence.
The task during adolescence is to achieve ego identity
and avoid role confusion, and thus discover some
balance between the potential maladaptive tendency of
fanaticism and the malignant tendency of repudiation.
If one successfully negotiates this stage, one may
emerge with the virtue Erikson called fidelity. Fidelity
means loyalty, the ability to live by society’s standards
despite their imperfections and inconsistencies; and the
ability to find a place in one’s community, a place that
will allow one to contribute with a unique identity to
one’s social group. Conversely, it is not uncommon for
people to emerge from adolescence in a state of ‘role
confusion’, where there is a reluctance to commit to the
ISSN 1743–9760 print/ISSN 1743–9779 online
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person they have become or where there is a general
lack of established identity. Erikson argued that role
confusion results in difficulties in negotiating further
crises in later life, whereas successful negotiation of this
stage allows for a transition into adulthood with a firm
sense of ‘who I am’, resulting in greater ability to face
further crises later. This focus on the adaptive
development of psychosocial strengths and the
dynamic balance between strengths and weaknesses
positions Erikson as one of the pioneers in the area of
positive psychology. Interestingly, despite the key role
Erikson’s model has played in how psychologists view
life-span development, there is little published research
that seeks to empirically validate the model.
Whitbourne’s book goes some way to redress this
lack of research.
Whitbourne is a researcher working in the field of
adult development and she has dedicated over 40 years
to the project discussed in her book. While Whitbourne
was still at high school, a doctoral student at a US
university collected data from 350 university students
using a questionnaire based on Erikson’s model. Ten
years later, when Whitbourne was teaching at the
university she became interested in the study data as
material for a class she was teaching. However, the
research possibilities also catalysed her imagination
and, after a lot of detective work and some good
fortune, Whitbourne managed to carry out a 10-year
follow-up study on the same cohort of 350 students.
Whitbourne subsequently carried out three more
10-year follow-ups and in her book she provides us
with a rare insight into the adult development of a
group of people across 40 years viewed through the lens
of Erik Erikson’s eight-stage model of development.
Whitbourne’s data analysis strategy resulted in the
assignment of participants to one of five ‘pathways’
based on their scores on the questionnaires at each
time point. She names the pathways as: (1) Meandering
Way, (2) Straight and Narrow Way, (3) Downward
Slope, (4) Triumphant Trail and (5) Authentic Road.
Whitbourne gives an explanation of each pathway in
turn and introduces us to some of her participants to
illustrate how the different pathways shape their life.
The Meandering Way is the pathway of people who
are unable to settle on a clear set of goals and on a way
to achieve those goals. As an example, we are
introduced to Edward. Edward has a history of
moving from one career to another, often moving at
a time when he seemed on the verge of being successful.
For Edward, this trend started in college as he
 Book Review
transferred between majors in medicine, accountancy
and geology in turn. Early data from Edward revealed
a low score on identity. Whitbourne interprets that this
low score on identity may explain in part why Edward
continued to make so many changes to his life course
as he continuously sought the perfect role in life.
The Straight and Narrow Way describes people
whose lives follow a predictable path and who tend to
shy away from risks. We are introduced to Bruce as
someone who shows a clear career plan from early in
life and who work hard to achieve their life goals
without showing any signs of deviation. Although
early psychological profiles show Bruce to be scoring in
the average range on measures of adaptive functioning,
later in his life he begins to show a reduction in
initiative, life-satisfaction and ego-integrity.
Whitbourne wonders if Bruce had regrets about the
risks he did not take.
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The Downward Slope reflects the lives of people
who appear to have everything going for them in early
life (e.g. great potential and optimism) but things do
not go well for them in later life, often after one or two
poor decisions. The case used to elucidate this pathway
is Frank. Frank found a career early in life and was
successful in the mortgage sector. However, it
appeared that vocational success did not result in
high scores on life-satisfaction for Frank. Frank then
turned his attention to the area of social housing.
While Frank was now apparently happy in his new
work role and relatively financially secure, he sepa-
rated from his wife. Frank subsequently changed jobs
again and remarried. When surveyed in his 50s,
Frank’s identity score plummeted. Whitbourne uses
Frank’s story to develop a number of hypotheses as to
how his life direction may have taken the ‘downward
slope’. Although Frank was still in difficulty at the
most recent data collection phase, Whitbourne uses his
case to suggest how someone on the downward slope
might turn their life around.
Next, the Triumphant Trail is followed by people
who overcome significant challenges in their lives. One
example provided is that of Sally who overcomes the
death of her spouse in early adulthood and the break-
up of a subsequent relationship. She went on to have a
successful career and her scores on the psychological
measures used in the research were consistently high
across all dimensions, including autonomy, initiative
and identity. The author examines which factors may
be important in dealing with difficulties and challenges.
The final pathway is the Authentic Road.
Whitbourne describes the people on this pathway as
people who continuously examine their life’s direction
and make decisions to change aspects of their lives that
are not satisfying. Whitbourne relates this pathway to
Erikson’s model by describing the people on the
authentic road as having a sufficiently well-developed
sense of identity such that they can confront sources of
73
dissatisfaction in their lives and take risks required to
get back on track. She contrasts these people with
those on the Meandering Way, who perhaps do not
know where they want to get to, and with those on the
Straight and Narrow Way, who may not have the
courage to take risks. Indeed, Whitbourne puts
forward the Authentic Road as the ideal pathway and
the ultimate route to adaptive human functioning. She
also relates this pathway to pre-positive psychology
perspectives (e.g. Maslow’s humanistic idea of self-
actualisation and Horney and Adler’s psychoanalytical
idea that a healthy personality requires that one
discovers one’s true self).
One of the successes of Whitbourne’s book is how
it seeks to relate Erikson’s model to a range of other
psychological models. Whitbourne successfully places
Erikson’s model into a biopsychosocial framework,
using individual life stories to explore how personal-
ities are formed and reformed as a result of changes in
participants’ bodies, minds and historical and cultural
contexts. Whitbourne also successfully integrates
Butler’s (1963) ‘Life Review’ methodology. Butler
based the idea of the life review on Erickson’s concept
of ego integrity. Butler originally offered the life review
methodology as a process to help people at the end of
their lives to accept and integrate their life experiences
into a unified whole. The life review involves compar-
ing what the person has done in their life with what
they had hoped to do, and reconciling any differences.
This allows the person to accept the life they have lived
and to value their legacy. Interestingly, Whitbourne
develops the idea that reviewing one’s legacy is
something that can be of value to individuals
throughout their lives. One of the main outcomes of
the research is the recommendation by Whitbourne
that continually re-evaluating one’s life can help to
maximise one’s potential for fulfilment.
While much of the book is written in a narrative
style, the author takes a more argumentative approach
when she challenges what she calls ‘the myth of the
midlife crisis’. Whitbourne calls on a broad range of
research to suggest that the idea of the midlife crisis, as
it is commonly understood, has no basis in extant
research evidence. Whitbourne also uses the findings of
her own research to support this conclusion. However,
Whitbourne does not mean to imply that people do not
go through a range of personality crises throughout
their lives. Indeed, a core finding from Whitbourne’s
research is that people generally go through many of
Erickson’s crises. Importantly though, people do not
necessarily go through the crises at the same time.
Individual differences in the research suggest that some
people may get a head start in working their way
through psychosocial stages of development, but
others often catch up at a later stage. This analysis of
individual differences in the rate of psychosocial
development and in the different developmental
 74 Book Review
pathways that characterise different lives adds great
depth to the research.
On the other hand, as a researcher, I also
considered the idiosyncratic interpretation of different
life narratives and pathways by Whitbourne as one of
the potential weaknesses of the book and the long-
itudinal study it represents. From early in the book,
when Whitbourne outlines the pathway she labels ‘The
Meandering Way’, she makes it clear that she is
‘projecting from [her] own experience’ (p. 81). She does
this when interpreting how one of the participants
(Julia) may have experienced life as a junior academic
staff member. Later, Whitbourne queries the possibi-
lity of self-report bias when participants on another
pathway (The Straight and Narrow Road) report
higher levels of fulfilment than Whitbourne might
subjectively have expected. These two examples are
replicated in other chapters and, overall, they leave the
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reader with a sense that the author may have
interpreted the qualitative data in a way that reflected
a very specific set of values. However, despite this
potential bias, I enjoyed working through the story of
each participant’s life as formulated by the author. In
some cases, I would have formulated them differently
but the reader is left with a sense that the author has
great warmth for her participants and deep under-
standing of their life trajectories and psychosocial
development.
Overall, this book offers a highly accessible
perspective on a longitudinal research study that is
sure to influence further research in the area. Even in
the field of developmental psychology, the psycho-
social focus and analysis strategy adopted by
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Whitbourne is rarely observed and this study provides
unique insight to anyone interested in the development
of psychosocial strengths and the search for fulfilment.
Notably, Whitbourne invites the reader to evaluate
their own life pathway and she also makes good use of
case-studies to display the type of analysis that was
completed and the different psychosocial outcomes
associated with different life paths.
In conclusion, I enjoyed reading this book. The
overview it provides on a life-long research project was
of interest to me as a researcher. The life stories of the
participants and the interpretation of these stories by
the author interested me as a clinician. As a researcher,
the opportunity to read an overview of a life-time of
research immediately attracted me and this book gives
a wonderful insight into how a researcher can devote
their life with such enthusiasm and integrity to one
project.
References
Butler, R.N. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of
reminiscence in the aged. Psychiatry, 26, 65–76.
Erikson, E.H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York,
NY: Norton.
Whitbourne, S.K., Sneed, J.R., & Sayer, A. (2009).
Psychosocial development from college through midlife:
A 34-year sequential study. Developmental Psychology, 45,
1328–1340.
Haulie Dowd
School of Psychology, NUI, Galway, Ireland
Email: haulie.dowd@nuigalway.ie