Robert Peck elaborated on Erikson's eighth stage of development by dividing it into middle age and old age periods. Middle age consists of four stages from ages 42-55 focusing on valuing wisdom over physical powers, social relationships over sexualizing, emotional flexibility, and mental flexibility. Old age involves developmental tasks of differentiating identity from work roles, transcending physical limits, and finding purpose through contributions to future generations. Successfully navigating these stages and tasks leads to healthy transitions into late adulthood.

1. Stages of Adult Development
Robert Peck

2. Robert F. Peck
• A psychologist, has elaborated on
Erikson’s eighth stage of development by
further dividing it into two periods:
– Middle age
– Old age

3. Middle Age
• Between 42-55
• Has four stages, each of these stage help
explain the progression that adult goes
through psychologically while they are
growing mature.
• Successful movement through this stages
can equate to a healthy transition from
Middle Adulthood to Late Adulthood.

4. 4 Adjustments of Middle Age
1. Valuing wisdom versus Valuing Physical
Powers
2. Socializing versus Sexualizing in Human
Relationships
3. Emotional Flexibility versus Emotional
Impoverishment
4. Mental Flexibility versus Mental Rigidity

5. Valuing wisdom versus Valuing
Physical Powers
• Decrease in physical strength, stamina,
attractiveness
• Increase in wisdom
An individual must accept that they do not
have the energy to work as much as many
hours as they did when they were
younger.

6. Socializing versus Sexualizing
in Human Relationships
• Sexual climacteric is related to general
physical decline.
• Success in this stage means valuing
people more as individual personalities
and companions rather than as sex
objects.
• A couple’s understanding of each other is
deeper than earlier in life, when it was
more egocentric.

7. Emotional Flexibility versus
Emotional Impoverishment
• The ability to shift emotional investment
from one person or activity to another is
present throughout life.
• Stage where parents die, children leave
home for good. Friends and relatives are
diminished by death.
• Time when many have the widest circle of
acquaintances within a wide age range, in
both the community and at work.

8. Mental Flexibility versus Mental
Rigidity
• Some people learn to master their
experiences, achieve a degree of
detached perspective on them and make
use of them as provisional guides to
solution of new issues.

9. 3 Developmental task for Older
Adults
1. Ego Differentiation versus Work Role
Preoccupation
2. Body transcendence versus
Preoccupation
3. Ego transcendence versus Ego
Preoccupation

10. Ego Differentiation versus Work
Role Preoccupation
• Stage where an old adult thinks about
what he is going to do after retirement.
• Finding ways to affirm self-worth outside
the work role.
• Must adjust values to place less emphasis
on selves as workers or professionals and
more on attributes that don’t involve work,
such as being a grandparent or a
gardener.

11. Body transcendence versus
Preoccupation
• Elderly individuals can undergo significant
changes in their physical capabilities as a
result of aging.
• Focusing on cognitive and social powers
in order to “transcend” physical limitations.
• Individual must learn to cope with more
beyond those physical changes.

12. Ego transcendence versus Ego
Preoccupation
• Accepting that life is finite by findings ways
to contribute to the welfare of the future
generations.
• If people in late adulthood see these
contributions, they will experience Ego
Transcendence. If not, they may become
preoccupied with the question of whether
their lives had value and worth to society.

13. For Peck, the “successful ager” is one who
is purposefully active in perpetuating the
culture by “doing all he could to make it a
good world for his familial or cultural
descendants”.

14. -Eso es Todos-
Prepared by:
Apple Jane Salutan