The Search for Fulfillment: Revolutionary New Research That Reveals the Secret to Long-term Happiness [Hardcover]

Susan Krauss Whitbourne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2010

In the fall of 1966, at a university in the Northeast, 350 students signed up for a psychological survey on personal development and happiness. In 1977, Susan Krauss Whitbourne, then a young psychology professor, came across the study and decided to expand it. She tracked down the study's original participants and questioned them every decade until she had forty years' worth of data. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Whitbourne reveals the findings of this extensive project, a seminal piece of research into how people change over the course of their lifetimes. The results indicate something fascinating: No matter how old or how content you might currently feel, it is never too late to steer your life toward a greater sense of purpose and satisfaction.

    Western society often paints a pessimistic view of aging, a "best years are behind you" attitude. But Whitbourne challenges this notion and posits that it's possible to find fulfillment at any age. Guided by her research, she identifies five different life pathways and provides a questionnaire that will help you discover which one you are currently on:
 
• The Meandering Way You have a low sense of identity, lack priorities, and feel lost, unable to settle on a clear set of goals.
• The Downward Slope You seem to have it all, until one or two poor decisions send your life into a spiral.
• The Straight and Narrow Way You embrace predictability, shy away from risk, and don't enjoy shaking up your routine.
• The Triumphant Trail Your inner resilience has allowed you to overcome significant challenges that could have left you despondent.
• The Authentic Road You take a bold and honest look at your life, assess whether it's truly satisfying, and take the necessary risks to get back on track.
 
Whitbourne shows how you can work yourself off a negative pathway and onto one that is more fulfilling. And if you identify yourself as being on one of the more positive pathways, you'll learn how to keep enhancing your feelings of satisfaction.

    Filled with insight and candid personal profiles of Whitbourne's subjects, The Search for Fulfillment offers proof that change is not only possible but ultimately rewarding. Revolutionary and inspirational, this encouraging book provides a new way of looking at our lives—and a guidepost for making changes for the better, at any age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Whitbourne, a professor of psychology at UMass-Amherst, has put her entire life's work in the pages of her new study, a full 40 years' worth of research, focused on a single group of human subjects. The data Whitbourne has gathered in this 28-UP-style journey are distilled into an enlightening compass to guide readers through the various possible pathways, as she calls them, to happiness and to making the changes necessary for a meaningful life. Whitbourne deserves commendation for both the hopeful message she delivers and the elegant prose with which she conveys her complex research. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"This remarkable exploration into the core dimensions of human nature takes readers of all ages on a journey of liberation. The psychologically revolutionary ideas that flow through every chapter free us from simplistic pop-psych notions of 'midlife crises' and confining age-based passages. We come to appreciate the extraordinary fluidity of human nature as people mature and embark on life's dynamic pathways, ideally toward personal fulfillment on triumphant or authentic paths. Emerging from solid, original research, The Search for Fulfillment's sound, practical advice can transform your life. This is a must-read-now book."—Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox
 
"In her groundbreaking new book, psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne shows that the path to happiness comes in many forms and can start at any point in our lives. Vividly portraying the lives of a group of baby boomers over a forty-year period, she draws lessons that compellingly illustrate that it's never too late to foster significant change in our own lives, and that fulfillment is within the reach of each of us." —Robert S. Feldman, associate dean and professor of psychology, University of Massachusetts Amherst; author of The Liar of Your Life
 
"It took me most of my life to discover what Susan Krauss Whitbourne has now proven irrefutably: You can create a whole new life with a new kind of happiness at any age."—Michael Gates Gill, author of How Starbucks Saved My Life
 
"The Search for Fulfillment is an engaging, thought-provoking, and compelling read. Susan Krauss Whitbourne does a masterly job of integrating scientific research on personality development over the lifespan with vivid, real-world examples. Perhaps most important, she provides all of us with practical and helpful suggestions for finding meaning and making positive change in our lives. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about what psychological research suggests are the best strategies for finding happiness, joy, and psychological well-being."—Catherine A. Sanderson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, Amherst College

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (January 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345499999
• ISBN-13: 978-0345499998
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,277,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very flawed and trite. Nothing revolutionary., December 22, 2010

By 

bronx book nerd (Bronx, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Search for Fulfillment: Revolutionary New Research That Reveals the Secret to Long-term Happiness (Hardcover)

There are a number of problems with this book. First, the author's conclusions are based on a small sample of graduates from "a private university in the Northeast" (if the name was mentioned, I missed it). From this, she extrapolates her findings to all 76 million baby boomers. This approach seems wrong on two points: first, I am not a statistician but I can't see how she can take such a small number and draw such general conclusions about a population that large and diverse; second, her study is also flawed by the WEIRD bias, that is using mostly White European Industrial Rich Democratic subjects to draw conclusions about a larger pool of people. In addition to this bias, her analysis is based on Erik Erikson's theory of personal development and growth. His theory is interesting and makes sense, but is it ultimately correct? Psychological theories wax and wane over time, as Krauss herself demonstrates when discussing the myth of the mid-life crisis.

Another problem with Krauss' book is that she is basically making a lot of stuff up when it comes to the details of her subjects' lives. She seems required to do this to support her creation of five life "pathways": the Meandering Way; the Downward Slope; the Straight and Narrow Way; the Triumphant Trail; and the Authentic Road. As she describes how her subjects' lives fall into one of these categories, she fills in the blanks that are necessarily there because of the nature of her data collection tool, which is basically a bunch of question geared to determine where you are on Erikson's scale of personality theory. An example of this fabrication is when Krauss speculates why one of her subjects abruptly left a university where she was on a tenure track. She must have been denied tenure for not publishing; as a result, she will now never get another good academic job and must necessarily seek work for which she is overqualified, now that her name sports a PhD after it. Well, maybe that scenario is possible but maybe her subject had an affair with the janitor and preferred to go off with him to have passionate relations unencumbered by the burdens of academia. Who knows? Krauss does this speculation and filling in of blanks constantly; her text is littered with phrases like "I can only assume...", "It seems reasonable to think that...", "My guess is that..." It got to the point where I felt I was reading sheer fantasy - I skipped these profiles after reading a good number of them. In addition there was a creepy factor involved too: in some cases Krauss Googled her subjects to get more information to infer what she could and tie her loose ends. Although this information is accessible, it seemed to me like an invasion of privacy (and did I mention creepy?)

Finally, Krauss' advice on how to get on the "right" pathway is trite and falls flat. There is no "secret to long-term happiness" in this book. For example, if your life has sucked up to now, hey, reframe it and think differently about it. How revolutionary! Don't feel you're going to leave a legacy and feel bummed about that? Create a killer recipe that will be handed down from generation to generation. Stuck on the Straight and Narrow path? You don't need to do anything major to get free - do something simple like ditch "that navy-blue blazer" or let "your hair perm grow out". Armed with this revolutionary know-how I am now on the straight and narrow path back to the library, grateful that I borrowed instead of bought this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A meandering and unhelpful guide to... something..., March 31, 2011

By 

C. Watson "c" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Search for Fulfillment: Revolutionary New Research That Reveals the Secret to Long-term Happiness (Hardcover)

This is possibly one the most dissapointing psychological "self-help" books I've read. It is little more than a compilation of dull narratives about "life-pathways" based on a small sample of study participants and it speaks volumes about the biases of the author much more than it does about realities of the human search for fulfillment.

Trying to give the book its fair chance I read it twice, attempting to extrapolate the core messages from it. So let me save you the trouble and paraphrase the authors key suggestions:

1) Conduct a life review... look back on your past and figure out why you're not currently doing what you aspired to do when you were younger.

2) Try to realign your life circumstances, job, and relationships with your core values as revealed by the 'life review' to find your 'authentic self'.

3) Figure out (somehow) how to believe you are leaving a legacy for future generations.

That's about it... seriously. Certainly there's lots of repetitive rehashings of former psychological theories but the author never quite manages to create either an interesting historical perspective nor a compelling argument as to how or why her suggestions would work any better than any other "how to be happy" book on the shelf. Save your money. I would recommend some of Pema Chodron's books instead - while a little "new-agey", they offer much deeper insights into the nature of lasting fulfillment than this book does.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Search Fulfilled, March 30, 2010

By 

P. D. Freeman (PITTSBURGH, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Search for Fulfillment: Revolutionary New Research That Reveals the Secret to Long-term Happiness (Hardcover)

For fans of the 7-Up series, a new generation and their life choices are now explored through the prism of Erikson's personality theories. This compelling book captures the progression of the Baby Boomer generation over three decades. Whitbourne portrays the life choices made by a group of individuals participating in an ongoing, longitudinal research study, and shows how these decisions, combined with personality factors, influenced their life progression. Whitbourne's description of life pathways helped to bring my own life into focus. I believe that the fascinating set of case-studies will resonate with older and younger readers alike, but will also bring hope--that it is never too late to change paths and find fulfillment.