ABSTRACT
The evidence for a developmental framework of the third age is read clearly enough in the historical and cross-cultural record; logical necessity requires that the people move to a developmental perspective in regard to the study and understanding of elderhood. Linton’s first level, concerning the ways in which each man is like all other men, refers to the human species as a distinct entity, with certain defining appetites and potentials; it also refers to the generic human characteristics that contribute to species survival—and to its particular problems. Paradoxically, Linton’s first level finds its best metaphor in geophysics, in the continental plates that shift and grind in their slow march deep below the earth’s surface. Linton’s second level—“each man is like some other men”—refers to the collective and cultural frameworks of human existence. Thus, research into the neglected terrain of Level, the author opens up new domains and new answers to the problems and possibilities of the aging psyche.
