ABSTRACT
The orientation of the respondent to interaction in his life space is classified by a combination of variables central to the theory of action developed by Talcott Parsons. Sociologists and social psychologists have handled large populations, communities, large organizations, and small groups, either artificial or natural, such as the family. It is sometimes thought that psychologists, or at least some psychologists, deal with “the individual,” but the sociopsychological world can be sliced in a different way, yielding the abstraction, “the social system of the individual actor.” The activity theory is not properly a theory in the same sense as the disengagement theory. The order of presentation of cases in each class does take the success dimension into consideration to emphasize the point that successful aging can occur in several ways of life. Life space scores were put in rank order. All the autonomous-precarious cases are, or have been, heavily involved in the world of work.
