“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
and one man is his time plays many parts,
his acts being seven ages…”
William Shakespeare, in addition to being a master poet and playwright, was quite an astute psychologist. This excerpt from his comedy As You Like It, suggests what is now referred to as Stages of Psychosocial Development, or simply, Developmental Stages. Shakespeare goes on in the full passage to give witty one sentence descriptions of these seven developmental stages such as “…the infant, mewling and pucking in the nurse’s arms…” and “…the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping unwillingly to school…”
However, what is of more interest is his reference to 7 ages, or stages, of development. In modern terms, these seven stages are infancy, earlier childhood, later childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood and later adulthood. These developmental periods are each characterized by tasks and challenges and not entirely age-based. That is, it’s not at all uncommon to find a person in their middle adulthood years working on incompleted adolescent tasks and challenges. This is sometimes referred to as the “mid life crisis.” The “late life crisis” is less well known, but exists.
The nice thing about psyche-social developmental stages is we can count on them….they are as structured as the motion of the sun and moon; we keep on movin’ through one phase of development, one stage, to the next, learning, growing and becoming…..Shakespeare’s point is…..all the word is a developmental stage….
