Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study (49 page)
Read Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study Online
Authors: George E. Vaillant
Unlike the other Guardians we’ve seen in these pages, he had left his rich inner life behind him in the service of what felt to him like the obligations of late middle age. I found myself thinking of the eighty-year-old Robert Sears, a “Termite” (as the gifted Terman children called themselves) and a brilliant and creative professor of psychology. I remember watching him in the Terman Study archive, unpaid, sorting the old IBM punch cards—a thankless task if there ever was one—so that young whippersnappers like me could enjoy an orderly universe in which to make our reputations. He was cultivating his garden—as I cultivate mine in the Grant Study, long after retirement—and he did it with joy, not out of obligation.
Sublimation is a way of negotiating with the superego, of getting around guilt, of finding pleasure if not in the forbidden garden, then at least in the garden next door. It served Clovis very well for a long time, but his Calvinist conscience eventually got its own back. Clovis
had
never freed himself from his guilt over having divorced his first wife, and as new obligations piled up—the library, the papers, the editing—they fed his superego until it became strong enough to shut the door to his passionate medieval world. Like Newman, who was always part mystic and part engineer, Clovis was always part ascetic and part troubadour. In his case, the ascetic eventually won out. At least for the time being, Perhapsy was dead once more. People change; people don’t.
Professors Clovis and Bright, however good they were at sublimation, were not examples of ideal flourishing any more than Beethoven was. Nor were they among the best outcomes in the Study. In fact, sublimation was only slightly more correlated with the success in the Decathlon of Flourishing than the neurotic defenses. Sublimation does not cure all ills. Its superiority lies in the fact that, unlike the neurotic defenses, it transforms agony into real pleasure—but a pleasure, unlike the more narcissistic defenses, that conforms to the needs of others. Beethoven’s need to create magic in music was as involuntary as the clotting of his blood, but just as critical to his resilient survival. To replace valid dynamic defenses that can and do change with maturity in favor of the reliable Big Five would be as foolish as ignoring the girlfriends and best mates of the College sophomores and studying only their body build—a mistake that the Grant Study made once and will not encourage others to make again. Its demonstration that intangible coping styles are relevant to modern social science made the Grant Study worth every penny spent on it, and worth the five years of my life that I have continued to devote to it—like Professor Sears—with no compensation at all.
IF WISHES WERE HORSES. . .
I am often asked how I would design a lifetime study if I had the opportunity to build one from scratch, instead of just walking into the
Grant
Study as I did and watching it grow. Let me close this history with my answer.
First, I would ask for an endowment to be run like an annuity, to last one hundred years. That would ensure that minimal continuity could be maintained even during lean years.
Second, in selecting my cohort I would not try for inclusive diversity, but I would include children of both sexes from no more than two contrasting ethnic groups. Sociology requires a large representative sample; biology needs small homogeneous samples. Historical change alters the rules of sociology; the rules of biology and ethology are more constant. In designing my ideal study I remain a biologist and an ethologist. And I would focus on blue-collar children, because (despite the reasoning of the early planners) the Inner City men provided even more surprises than the College men did.
Third, along with DNA and social security numbers for all the members of my cohort, I would collect the names, birth dates, and addresses of five relatives under sixty who do not live with them. The names and addresses of research subjects change with frustrating regularity, and this would spare us the huge investment in detective work that lost subjects demand.
Fourth, I would concentrate on finding and using the best measures available to assess the positive emotions (joy, compassion, trust, hope, and their like), and attachment.
Fifth, I would assess involuntary coping through a two-hour videotaped couples interview every twenty years in preference to the excerpted vignettes that I used. That way real-time rater reliability could be obtained, and a major source of bias (the excerpting) removed.
Sixth, consistent with safe x-ray exposure limits, I would collect neuroimaging data every five years. Like the men who started the Grant Study, I am not quite sure what I would be looking for—the
brain
changes that accompany the evolution of twenty-year-old narcissism into seventy-year-old empathy?—but the ambitious kids reviewing the data in 2050 certainly would be.
Finally, I would keep data collection simple enough so that after fifty years investigators would not be drowning in their own accumulations. The Grant Study was already struggling with this intrinsic problem of longitudinal studies all the way back in 1941, and that was only three years in! I deliberately kept data collection simple, and I take some credit for the long-term survival of the Study of Adult Development because of it. I would keep the Study cohort small enough that every member would remain a person to the Study, and not just a collection of numbers. Every member could maintain a warm alliance with the Study staff, and errors in data would be noticed. And yes, I would collect pencil-and-paper tests—belief systems need to be tested empirically.
CONCLUSION
At ten years old I entertained a Perhapsy-like wish for the greatest telescope in the world. When I was an assistant professor at Tufts Medical School and assumed responsibility for the Grant and Glueck Studies, I believed I had found it—the device that would let me see entire lifetimes at a single glance. In 1969, begging for money as usual, I paraphrased Archimedes to the Commissioner of Mental Health: “Give me the salary for a single research assistant, and I will move the world.” He very graciously told me that he could not do that. But the Grant Foundation did, and I was off and running.
I have spent forty years peering through that telescope, and it has shown me world after world that I never dreamed of. Over those years I’ve developed convictions, and (I pride myself on this, too) exposed them to empirical scrutiny. Three big ones have stood the test
of
time, if not perfectly. One was that a warm childhood was a most important predictive factor and that a bad childhood was not. Another was the assertion that I made to
The Atlantic,
that the most important contributor to joy and success in adult life is love (or, in theoretical terms,
attachment
). My third great conviction was the identification of the involuntary adaptive “mechanisms of defense” as the second greatest contributor. Forty years of study have convinced me that in this I was right; mature defenses remain the
sine qua non
of warm relationships. Alas, however, they do not appear to be essential for sustained good health and successful physical aging—yet another favorite hypothesis washed up as I followed the men into old age.
This extraordinary telescope has brought great joy and meaning to my life. It allowed me to embark upon a quest that had haunted me from childhood, exploring questions that matter to me both personally and scientifically. It has provided me with wonderful companions on the way—not only my many colleagues over all these years, but also the Study members themselves. And I become more and more aware that the Study, and the work we’ve done with it, has encouraged other people to think about their own lives and the lives of others. Not statistically, perhaps, but with a little more curiosity and a little more interest and a little more kindness. And how can that hurt?
APPENDIXES
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
APPENDIX A
:
THE INTERVIEW SCHEDULES
APPENDIX B
:
THE INNER CITY MEN AND THE TERMAN
WOMEN
APPENDIX C
:
ASSESSMENT OF CHILDHOOD SCALES
APPENDIX D
:
ADULT ADJUSTMENT SCALES
APPENDIX E
:
DOMINANT COLLEGE PERSONALITY TRAITS
The Grant Study Interviews.
Below are two examples of the semi-structured schedules of questions I used to guide my interviews with the men. Within reason, listed questions were always asked in the same order. The interviewer took longhand notes during the interview. Whenever a question elicited a problem area in a man’s life, the interviewer probed for his particular coping style.
The
Interview Schedule, age 45–55
I. Work
a. What do you do? Any recent changes in responsibility?
b. Ten years from now, where are you heading?
c. What do you like and what do you dislike about your work?
d. What for you is most difficult?
e. What job would you have preferred?
f. What are good and bad aspects about relations with your boss? With subordinates?
g. How do you handle some of the problems that arise with these people?
h. Looking back, how did you get into your present work?
i. Were there people with whom you identified?
j. What work do you do outside of your job—degree of responsibility?
k. What plans for retirement?
l. Ever unemployed for more than a month? Why?
m.
What will you do the first week of retirement? Anticipated feelings?
II. Family
a. News of parents and siblings.
b. Describe each child, their problems and sources of concern to you.
c. How do you handle adolescence differently from your parents?
d. Any deaths: first response, second response, means of finally handling feelings.
e. This is the hardest question that I shall ask: Can you describe your wife?
f. Since nobody is perfect, what causes you concern about her?
g. Style of resolution of disagreements.
h. Has divorce ever been considered? Explain.
i. Quality of contact with parents and degree of pleasure derived.
j. Which of your parents wore the pants when you were younger?
III. Medical
a. How is your health overall?
b. How many days sick leave do you take a year?
c. When you get a cold, what do you do?
d. Specific medical conditions and means of coping with the disability.
e. Views and misconceptions about these conditions.
f. Injuries and hospitalizations since college.
g.
Patterns of use of smoking and recollections about stopping.
h. Pattern of use of medicines and of alcohol.
i. Do you ever miss work due to emotional strain, fatigue, or emotional illness?
j. Effect of work on health and vice versa.
k. How easily do you get tired?
l. Effect of health on the rest of your life.
IV. Psychological
a. Biggest worries last year.
b. Dominant mood over past six months.
c. Some people have trouble going for help and advice: What do you do?
d. Can you talk about your oldest friends? What made them friends?
e. Who are the people (non-family) you would feel free to call on for help?
f. What social clubs do you belong to, and what is your pattern of entertaining?
g. How often do you get together with friends?
h. What do people criticize you for or find irritating about you?
i. What do they admire or find endearing?
j. What are your own satisfactions and dissatisfactions with yourself?
k. Ever seen a psychiatrist? Who? When? How long? What do you remember? What did you learn?
l. Persistent daydreams or concerns that you think about but don’t tell others?
m. Effect of emotional stress?
n.
Philosophy over rough spots?
o. Hobbies and use of leisure time? Athletics?
p. Vacations? How spent and with whom?
q. Any questions raised by my review of case record?
r. What questions do you have about the Study?
The
Interview Schedule, age 65–80
I. Work
1. Why did you retire? When?
2. How was your job over the last two years? What did you miss most? Was there a retirement ceremony?
3. What did you do the first six weeks of retirement?
4. What takes the place of your job?
5. What is your most important activity now?
6. What is the best part of retirement?
7. The worst part?
8. The most difficult part?
9. How is your retirement financed?
10. Any job change if you were to do life over?
II. Social
1. What is it like being home for lunch?
2. How do you spend increased time with your wife? Problems?
3. How did your marriage last a quarter century?
4. What have you learned from your children?
5. Grandchildren?
6. Oldest friend?
7. Activities with others?
III.
Psychological
1. Mood over last 6 months?
2. Worries last year?
3. Changes in religious beliefs?
IV. Health
1. Health since retirement?
