Make no mistake about it, a new discipline of life history is what Levinson is after. Because he believes no single existing discipline is able to study men's lives as they evolve in the world--each being limited by the questions it poses for itself and the types of phenomena it chooses to study--Levinson is explicitly calling for a massive redirection of psychology, the life sciences, and the social sciences towards the study of the individual life as it is lived in the world. Obviously, the man has chutzpah, but if he is right in his conclusions then such an effort is indeed justified.

While he does branch out in new directions--different research methods and a broader focus--Levinson is also clearly following in the wake of the psychoanalytic school of thought. Drawing on the work and concepts of Freud, Jung, Erikson and William James, among others, he attempts to generalize their ideas to include other times of life besides childhood and other crises and reorientations besides the Oedipal dilemma. Fortunately, Levinson also is more favorable to sociological sorts of questions and researches than are his more theoretical psychoanalytic counterparts, and therefore he tends to live less in a world of mental models and more in the world of everyday life, actual people, and verifiable evidence.

What evidence there is, in fact, seems to support Levinson. Each of the 40 men chosen--10 biologists, novelists, executives and workers between the ages of 35 and 45, from varied social class, ethnic, religious and educational backgrounds--went through or are currently undergoing a remarkably similar process of development at remarkably similar times of life. Levinson says he chose only men because he did not want to introduce another variable in his study--and since he could therefore only study one sex he opted for males because he wanted to understand himself better in the process. He makes no claim to obtaining a random sample; he is interested only in seeing if a similar underlying pattern exists at all. Like Jean Piaget studying the thoughts and feelings of his own children as appropriate examples of all children, Levinson holds with the theory that men are made of the same basic stuff. If this is so his findings are valid for a larger and wider group than the northeastern, middle-aged men of 1970s America. Hobbes said it first in 1651:

For the similitude of thoughts and passions of one man to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasion.

But very basic and key questions about the life cycle persist. Does the theory apply to women--from the beginning life cycle research has virtually ignored them. Does it apply to non-Western cultures, to earlier historical epochs? Levinson suggests it does, but has no real basis for this claim. And most importantly, as one is left shouting in frustration at roommates and friends after reading this book--Why? Why does life work this way, what is the motor of the changes of eras and developmental tasks, what causes the cycle to occur? Is the engine of change biological or social? Levinson does not have the answer, but it would indeed be amazing if a discipline provided all the answers at the beginning of its researches instead of at the end. Life history is a new approach and stimulates new questions and new ways to look at people--for ultimate answers we will just have to wait.

The Seasons of a Man's Life is a fascinating and provocative book, well-written, well-argued, and well-worth reading. It does not provide the answers but it poses the questions. As Levinson points out in the book's concluding paragraph

I am not saying that the life cycle in its present form is immutable... but fundamental change of this kind is evolutionary. For now, we have all we can do to understand the nature of the current life cycle and to work towards constructive change within it. If we cannot do so the next chapter may never be written. Despite the difficulty of the problem, our only reasonable choice is to get on with the work.

And each man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms...

Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion.