In Our Prime (43 page)

124
Seated at his dining room table:
Brim interview with author, 2008.

125
Over a lifetime, shifts:
Glen H. Elder Jr.,
The Life Course and Aging: Some Accomplishments, Unfinished Tasks, and New Directions,
presented at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Boston, Massachusetts, November 11, 2002.

125
In 1998, the psychologist Anne Colby:
Ibid.

125
Brim remembered the reaction to:
Orville G. Brim and Jerome Kagan,
Constancy and Change in Human Development
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 1.

125
When Brim and Kagan presented their:
Brim interview with author, 2008.

126
Nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century:
Lerner,
Concepts and Theories of Human Development,
71.

126
finite supply of the vital “male principle”:
Rothman and Rothman,
Pursuit of Perfection,
132–33.

126
or that a human being was physiologically
: Siddhartha Mukherjee,
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
(New York: Scribner, 2010), 496.

126
At a 1997 White House conference:
Malcolm Gladwell, “Baby Steps,”
New Yorker,
January 10, 2000,
http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_01_10_a_baby.htm
(accessed June 12, 2011).

127
As the eighties progressed, middle age:
“Life Course Perspectives: Report for 1983–1984,” Social Science Research Council, 82.

127
During those years, Brim and Baltes:
Brim interview with author, June 14, 2011.

127
“It's obvious,” Brim recalled:
Brim interview with author, 2008;
SRCD Oral History Interview of Orville Gilbert Brim,
January 17, 2009, in Vero Beach, Florida, conducted by David L. Featherman, professor of sociology and psychology, University of Michigan, 51, 67.

128
They gathered a large random:
Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
7–8.

128
Political parties in the nineteenth century:
U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare, Children's Bureau,
The Story of the White House Conferences on Children and Youth,
1967, 3–4.

128
By 1944, both political parties:
Neugarten, “The Changing Age Status System,” in
Middle Age and Aging,
19–20. In 1950, the name of the White House Conference expanded to include “Children and Youth.”

128
“That really did put middle”:
Brim interview with author, June 2009.

128
“this enterprise established”:
Featherman,
SRCD Oral History Interview of Orville Gilbert Brim,
55–56.

129
“Midlife is more flexible than
”:
Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?

129
middle age wasn't so bad:
Erica Goode, “New Study Finds Middle Age Is Prime of Life,”
New York Times,
February 16, 1999; Ronald Kotulak, “Study Finds Midlife ‘Best Time, Best Place to Be,'”
Chicago Tribune,
February 16, 1999; “Midlife Without the Crisis,”
Washington Post,
February 16, 1999.

129
The research debunked a number of popular:
Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
161, 445, 603.

129
Divorce in midlife was relatively rare:
Larry Bumpass interview with author, May 10, 2010.

130
Nearly sixty-two percent said
: Alice S. Rossi, “Menopausal Transition” in Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
170.

130
So while middle-aged women might have
:
ICPSR Bulletin
XX, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 4.

130
Although many people made it:
Lachman, “Development in Midlife,” 325.

130
Less than ten percent of those:
Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
611.

131
Brim told me he believes that people:
Brim interview with author; Brim,
Ambition
.

131
Alice S. Rossi, a sociologist and MacArthur investigator, suggested:
Rossi, “Social Responsibility to Family and Community,” in Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
581; Alice S. Rossi, “Life-Span Theories and Women's Lives,”
Signs
6, no. 1 (Autumn 1980), 4–32.

132
“Shortcomings that date from earlier years”:
Hall,
Senescence,
ix.

132
So David Foster Wallace, a deeply insightful:
D. T. Max, “The Unfinished,”
New Yorker,
March 9, 2009.

132
Lars von Trier:
Dennis Lim, “Danish Director Barred from Film Festival After Making Hitler Jokes,”
New York Times,
May 19, 2011.

132
As David Almeida, a psychologist at:
Sue Marquette Poremba,
Probing Question: Is the Midlife Crisis a Myth?,
Research Penn State,
http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/midlifecrisis.html
(accessed June 11, 2011).

132
“One spends a lifetime reconstructing”:
Brim,
Ambition,
85.

133
“For investigators trying to sort”:
Lachman, “Development in Midlife.”

133
When it came to describing:
Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
617–35.

134
Educational divisions revealed other unexpected:
Ibid., 306–15.

134
A similar class divide showed up:
Rossi, “Social Responsibility to Family and Community,” in Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
364.

135
From their early 30s through:
“Marital Status,” MIDUS newsletter,
http://www.midus.wisc.edu/newsletter/
(accessed June 12, 2011).

136
The MacArthur project attempted to probe more deeply:
Brim et al.,
How Healthy Are We?,
21, 374, 390, 418; MIDMAC website,
http://midmac.med.harvard.edu/research.html
(accessed June 12, 2011).

137
“
When you get to be 40,” said Geoffrey Powers:
Katherine Newman,
A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City
(New York: New Press, 2006), 99.

137
Katherine Newman, a sociologist at Princeton University, oversaw:
Newman,
Different Shade of Gray,
16–17, 51–52, 96, 114–15, 122, 221; Katherine Newman, “Place and Race,” in
Welcome to Middle Age!,
Shweder, ed., 283, 290.

140
In 2004, ten years after Bert Brim's:
Midlife in the United States website,
http://www.midus.wisc.edu/midus2/
(accessed June 12, 2011).

142
Despite claims that emerged in the 1990s:
Richard Davidson interview with author, 2008 and 2009; Elkhonon Goldberg,
The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older
(New York: Gotham Books, 2005), 41–42.

143
“That's been a spectacular strategy”:
Davidson interview with author, 2008.

143
Davidson and his colleagues plan to follow:
Davidson interview with author, 2008 and 2009.

144
He had kept this passion:
Dirk Johnson, “Dalai Lama Donates to Center in Wisconsin,”
New York Times,
September 26, 2010; excerpts from Dr. Richard Davidson's keynote address on contemplative neuroscience at the Center for Mindfulness 7th Annual International Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts, in March 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAGu1LeE-SE
(accessed June 12, 2011).

145
“This I (that is to say, my soul by which”:
Nicholas Bunnin, ed.,
The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
(Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1995), 509–21.

145
“I was interested in emotion”:
Davidson interview with author, 2008.

145
impact of the telescope:
Goldberg,
Wisdom Paradox,
238.

146
“Spinoza prefigured in a remarkable way”:
Harcourt Brace interview with author,
Interview with Antonio Damasio,
2003, transcript available at
http://www.harcourtbooks.com/authorinterviews/bookinterview_damasio.asp
(accessed May 20, 2011).

147
In one study, monks who had spent:
Davidson interview with author; Benedict Carey, “Scientists Bridle at Lecture Plan for Dalai Lama,”
New York Times,
October 19, 2005.

147
One possibility, Davidson hypothesizes:
Lutz, A., H. A. Slagter, J. Dunne, and R. J. Davidson, “Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation,”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
12, no. 4 (2008): 163–69, NIHMS no. 82882.

147
Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard psychologist:
Stephen Hall, “Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?,”
New York Times Magazine,
September 15, 2003;
http://www.positscience.com/human-brain/brain-plasticity/brain-plasticity-luminaries/Richard-Frackowiak
(accessed June 12, 2011).

148
Neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change:
Richard Davidson, “Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain,” Google Tech Talk, September 23, 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tRdDqXgsJ0&feature=related
(accessed June 15, 2011).

148
An experiment published in 2009:
Robert Schneider, Sanford Nidich, Jane Morley Kotchen, Theodore Kotchen, Clarence Grim, Maxwell Rainforth, Carolyn Gaylord King, John Salerno, “Reducing Negative Emotions, Promoting Health and Improving Quality of Life; Abstract 1177: Effects of Stress Reduction on Clinical Events in African Americans with Coronary
Heart Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial,”
Circulation
120 (2009): S461.

148
In 2011, a group of scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital reported:
“Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density,”
Behavioral Medicine Report,
January 21, 2011,
http://www.bmedreport.com/archives/22292
(accessed May 20, 2011); Britta K. Hölzel, James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, Sara W. Lazar, “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density,”
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
191, no. 1 (January 30, 2011): 36–43, DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006) (accessed June 12, 2011).

149
Myelin itself can deteriorate:
Barbara Strauch,
The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind
(New York: Viking, 2010), 86.

149
Scientists began questioning assumptions:
Sharan Merriam,
Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007), 366; “Tests of Ability to Learn Earn Praise of Middle Age,”
New York Times,
April 22, 1928.

150
In the 1970s:
Stephen Hall, “The Older and Wiser Hypothesis,”
New York Times Magazine,
May 6, 2007, 58.

150
Some differences in test results:
Daniel Goleman, “The Aging Mind Proves Capable of Long-Term Growth,”
New York Times,
February 21, 1984.

151
Most people do not naturally:
James Flynn,
What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007); “The IQ Conundrum,”
Cato Unbound,
November 2007 (accessed August 13, 2011).

151
Paul Baltes, one of the originators of life span theory:
Stephen Hall, “The Older and Wiser Hypothesis,”
New York Times Magazine,
May 6, 2007; Henry Alford on
http://incharacter.org/pro-con/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-wisdom-part-1/
(accessed June 12, 2011).

152
Sternberg, a former president of the American:
Robert Sternberg,
A Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Hall, “The Older and Wiser Hypothesis.”

152
The influential Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner:
Howard Gardner,
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
(New York: Basic Books, 1985), xi.

152
“While the theme of youth is flexibility”:
Merriam,
Learning in Adulthood,
347.

153
His in-laws, both in their 70s:
Gene Cohen,
The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain
(New York: Basic Books, 2006), 2.

154
About a thousand miles east:
Margie Lachman interview with author, May 11, 2011.