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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
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