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The first 45 years of Freud's life made a great story; perhaps that is why they have attracted so many biographers. By the end of that time, he had made his basic discoveries, roughed out major parts of his theories, and settled into a pattern of working and living that was not to be much disturbed for a good many years. It also happens to cover many of the stages or phases of personality growth as described in most theories of adult development, though until now none of his biographers made anything of that.
The central point of this latest biography is precisely to apply to Freud the developmental scheme presented by Daniel J. Levinson (1978) in The Seasons of a Man's Life. The author, Peter M. Newton, described on the book's jacket as Professor of Psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley and in private practice, studied with Levinson, who enthusiastically endorses this book. In 1984, Newton published a study of Samuel Johnson from the standpoint of this “theory of lives” in the International Review of Psycho-Analysis, and some other papers, but the present book is his first.
It happens that I gave a course in adult development during my last decade of teaching at New York University, in which Levinson's was one of the theories examined. It is by no means the only contender in this field, however, and it was disappointing to find that Newton does not draw on any of the other major contemporary contributors. He makes not a single reference to Jane Loevinger, Douglas Heath, Robert W. White, or Jack Block, doffs his hat briefly to Erikson in passing, and includes a single citation to one paper in one of the numerous volumes of Life Span Developmental Psychology. An author is entitled to a favorite theory, but it is all too easy to get the impression from the first chapter (“A Theory of Lives”) that Levinson's conception of adult development