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Dr.
Belove's Bibliography:
This
bibliography is a summary of the last several years’ research.
I
wanted to develop expertise in the area of dating at midlife.
Interviewing is important, but not sufficient to access all the
information I have been searching for. I needed theoretically
sound descriptions of that particular human dance. This led me
to several different sections of the library.
*
I believe now that a solid model rests on seven pillars:
1.
Gender Studies. Male and female psychology is
constructed differently. Dating involves figuring out how to
harmonize those differences. In this section I list the books
that I believe describe these differences.
2.
Relationship development. I re-read some
serious texts (my principle background was family psychology and
family therapy) and I read lot of pop psychology. Some of it was
quite good. I’ve mentioned the one’s I’ve liked here. I
also left a lot out. Much of it was clichéd, directed toward
less mature people, or directed toward people who hadn’t
thought much about their own psychology.
3.
Communication skills. Probably half of the problems in
relationships can be solved by good communication skills. The
skills you need to make a relationship work include listening,
self-disclosure, giving feedback, showing appreciation,
self-assertion, creative problems solving, and conflict
resolution. Complaining, showing resentment and getting even are
not on that list. This matter of communication skills brings out
some vanity in people. I don’t quite understand why. Like
driving, like dancing, and possibly also like lovemaking, 90% of
the people think their skills are above average, even though
that is impossible. Only 50% can be above average. I’ve
included some books that I think give good descriptions of
necessary communication skills.
4.
Adult Development. Writers in the field of adult
development all say that the field is relatively new and that
prior to the 1960’s or so, psychologists focused exclusively
on child development, believing that once you were an adult, you
were all developed. Of course that isn’t so. Historically, the
next area of development to be explored was gerontology, the
study of the very old. The last area to be studied formally was
midlife. Still, in the last 30 years there have been some
excellent books on adult development.
This
has been important to the Dating at Midlife project, obviously.
Something happens between the first and second half of adult
life. I’ve looked to some of the major thinkers to help me
find ways to describe that change. My own work has been to
coordinate that set of changes with what has been said about
gender politics and the process of dating.
5.
Sociology. Finally, I’ve taken a look at how
the cultural context for relationships has shifted. I’ve
identified four cultural shifts over the last half century that
I, and many others, believe have changed the rules forever on
how relationships get formed. The four shifts are these: the
sexual revolution, feminism, the norm of divorce, and the
culture of self-development. I’ve included in this
bibliography some of the texts that describe these shifts and
the implications they hold for personal relationships in the
years to come.
6.
Sex. I suppose if I were to follow some strict
academic way of organizing this bibliography I would include
this topic under gender relations, or communication skills, or
adult development. I might have even included it under
sociology. Each of those areas strongly effects the issue.
I’ve made it a separate topic. It is a separate topic. The
distinction between just friends and dating friends is sex. (I
know, some would debate this distinction but I’ll stand by
it.) It deserves it’s own section.
7.
Art, Spirituality and Maturity. This is one of
those common boundary categories, the place where psychology
touches spirituality. There is something about midlife that
involves harvesting experience in order to produce wisdom.
Frankly, I find more wisdom in art than I do in science, so
I’ve allowed this category to include poetry, novels and
spiritual writings. I’m actually not sure what we will do with
it. It may be the catch-all where we put things that don’t
make much sense any other way. It doesn’t matter. As an older
person, I don’t have to follow categories any more anyway. Let
that be a lesson.
Finally,
I’m not the only one putting this page together. I have bright
mature colleagues and this work is collaboration. We’ll each
initial our contributions. -- PLB
Marriage
in a Culture of Divorce by Karla B Hackstaff.
Temple UniveristyPress Philadelphia 1999 This is an serious and
thoughtful academic work. I am grateful to Dr. Kackstaff for the
concept of Culture of Divorce. Her analysis one of the strongest
supports for my claim that midlife dating exists in a
de-regulated culture. In this book she points out that the norm
for American today is that marriages can easily end in divorce.
She investigates how this shift in cultural context effects
married couples. -- PLB
The
Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together By
Eleanor E. Maccoby Belknap Press of Harvard University,
Cambridge 1998. Dr. Maccoby is professor emeritus at Stanford
and her field is gender differences. In contrast to the
instructive and intelligent light comedy of John Gray’s Venus
and Mars work, this is a serious study of gender differences
with all claims carefully reasoned and meticulously supported.
The major finding is that in childhood boys and girls tend to
form same sex groups and the separate groups develop distinct
cultures with different rules. Later, in adolescence and
adulthood, young women and men come together to construct
couples, work teams and parenting teams. However they bring with
them rules and assumptions from their separate peer groups. In
other words, the Venus and Mars that men and women come from are
the separate play worlds of childhood. PLB
The
Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development
by Robert Kegan. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 1982. This
brilliant, witty, graceful and insightful book is the best
general introduction to a theory of human development. Kegan
presents his own subtle and well-formed model and in the process
graciously explains several other models of human development.
The cover contains a blurb from George E. Vaillant, M.D.,
another pioneer in theories of human development, "If one
could buy only 1 book on adult dvelopment, this would be the
book to buy…It reflects the state of the art." Amen. PLB
In
Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
by Robert Kegan. Belknap Press. 1995. This book, some dozen
years after The Evolving Self, presents a simplified
model of adult development and also makes the claim that the
sociological changes of resent years have demanded a higher
level of maturity and consciousness from all adults. Kegan
describes the changes in partnering, parenting, education, and
business and argues that they all point to a kind of
sophisticate mental processing and self-possession that is
usually only expected of very high functioning people. For many
of us, the demands are excessive, hence the title of his book. I
find in his arguments detailed support for my contention that
dating at midlife is one more arena in which the demands are
high and often over the heads of many participants. -- PLB
You
Just Don’t Understand Women and Men in Conversation.
Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. Ballantine Books. New York 1990. In this
classic text, Dr. Tannen argues convincingly that men and women
come from different cultures and speak a different dialect. Her
term is "genderlect." She argues that this difference
in genderlects leads inevitably to misunderstandings. She
explains the differences in the male and the female frame of
reference and gives examples of how something innocent on one
dialectic could be disturbing in the other framework. -- PLB |
Why
it's different