Adaptation to Life

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Summary: What people like us have in common.
Review: Dr. Vaillant mines a long-term study of exemplar Harvard graduates and plots those men along a dimension of "adjusted-ness" to life. Some the best-adjusted share particular personality traits. Some the least-adjusted also have commonalites of ego defense mechanisms. Truly, time will tell who gets the most out of life and who does not. Thanks to the Grant Study and Dr. Vaillant, much has been revealed about what influences the course of one's life.

Rating:
Summary: What people like us have in common.
Review: Dr. Vaillant mines a long-term study of exemplar Harvard graduates and plots those men along a dimension of "adjusted-ness" to life. Some the best-adjusted share particular personality traits. Some the least-adjusted also have commonalites of ego defense mechanisms. Truly, time will tell who gets the most out of life and who does not. Thanks to the Grant Study and Dr. Vaillant, much has been revealed about what influences the course of one's life.

Rating:
Summary: A worry before buying / reading this book / title.
Review: I am now thinking about buying this title. I've read the opinion of the reader that backs it, but .... I am almost sure (due to many previous experiences) that the only shortcoming is not just about women, it for sure has been very probably written taking into account (hope I'm wrong) that north-americans are the only people living in this planet. So, if you are looking for readings that help you to succesfully deal with another and/or different type of society, or another type of country, opinions are so deeply oriented to northamerican way of handling life, they are not worthwhile and hardly applicable.

Rating:
Summary: The most influential book of my life
Review: I read this book a decade ago. I am a woman, and despite the fact that the study was of men and their maturing process, this was the most influential book I have ever read. Some of the Harvard men who were born with silver spoons in their mouths did not do very well in life; others who came from comparative "poverty" did better than those who had a foot up. Why? Those who did well learned how to respond to the knocks that life gives all of us. The book is very specific about what consitutes a mature response to life's setbacks and what constitutes an immature response. It gave me hope that no matter what a person's background, they could rise above it by becoming self-aware and learning how to better respond to what happens to them. This book gave me hope -- not in an inspirational "you can do it" kind of way, but in a researched, "this is what happened to these poeple" kind of way.

Rating:
Summary: Vaillant explores the life cycle and coping
Review: Vaillant's long-term study of college graduates investigates the ways in which the adaptive mechanisms of various individuals help explain why some people manage to cope effectively with the challenges in their lives while others cope barely or not at all. "One can live magnificently in this life if one knows how to work and how to love.... Adaptation to life means continued growth."