Life’s Great Passages: Adolescence, Midlife, and the Elder Passage

Dante talks about life as a road when he begins his Divine Comedy with these words: “In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.” Carl Jung thinks of life as a day when he tells us, “You cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of the morning, for what was true in the morning will by the afternoon have become a lie.” In this interactive seminar, we will search for the ways that we understand our lives and look at the three great transitional stages, each with very different psycho-social spiritual tasks.

Presenters: William O. Roberts, Jr. ’63, P ’96, is a consultant for Roberts Consulting, Inc. A former Assistant Dean of Admission and Lecturer in Religion at Wesleyan, he later served as minister of First Church in Middletown before following a career in the business world. His publications include Initiation to Adulthood: An Ancient Rite of Passage in Contemporary Form and Crossing the Soul’s River: A Rite of Passage for Men (at Midlife). Karl E. Scheibe, Professor of Psychology, is a clinical psychologist in private practice, and the author of Self-Studies and The Drama of Everyday Life.