George E. Vaillant is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Of the 31 men in the study incapable of establishing intimate
bonds, only four are still alive. Of those who were better at
forming relationships, more than a third are living. It’s not that
the men who flourished had perfect childhoods. Rather, as Vaillant
puts it, ‘What goes right is more important than what goes wrong.’
The positive effect of one loving relative, mentor or friend can
overwhelm the negative effects of the bad things that happen. In
case after case, the magic formula is capacity for intimacy
combined with persistence, discipline, order and dependability. The
men who could be affectionate about people and organized about
things had very enjoyable lives. But a childhood does not totally
determine a life. The beauty of the Grant Study is that, as
Vaillant emphasizes, it has followed its subjects for nine decades.
The big finding is that you can teach an old dog new tricks. The
men kept changing all the way through, even in their 80s and
90s.
*New York Times*
Vaillant concludes that personal development need never stop, no
matter how old you are. At an advanced age, though, growth consists
more in finding new hues and shades in one’s past than in
conceiving plans for the future. As the Harvard Study shows with
such poignancy, older men treat what lies behind them much as
younger men treat what lies ahead. The future is what young men
dream about; they ponder the extent to which it is predetermined or
open; and they try to shape it. For old men, it is the past they
dream about; it is the past whose inevitability or
indeterminateness they attempt to measure; and it is the past they
try to reshape. For the most regret-free men in the Harvard study,
the past is the work of their future.
*Wall Street Journal*
Triumphs of Experience elegantly summarizes the findings of this
vast longitudinal study, unique in the annals of research… [The]
book analyzes how the men fared over their late adulthood, and
indeed their entire lives. In it, Vaillant masterfully chronicles
how their life successes, or lack thereof, correlate with the
nature of their childhoods, marriages, mental health, physical
health, substance abuse, and attitudes. Extensive quantitative
findings are interspersed with the detailed stories of individual
study participants… Here Vaillant proves that his skills are
literary as well as scientific. The case histories are engaging
novelistic capsules that artfully bring the quantitative material
to life… Many of its findings seem universal. If they could be
boiled down to a single revelation, it would be that the secret to
a happy life is relationships, relationships, relationships… The
other overarching message of this book is that resilience counts…
Vaillant is that rare thing: a psychiatrist more interested in
mental flourishing than in mental illness. With Triumphs of
Experience, he has turned the Harvard men’s disparate stories into
a single narrative and created a field guide, both practical and
profound, to how to lead a good life.
*Wilson Quarterly*
The factor Vaillant returns to most insistently is the powerful
correlation between the warmth of your relationships and your
health and happiness in old age.
*The Atlantic*
In Triumphs of Experience, Vaillant elegantly and persuasively
brings us an answer to the question that launched a thousand
snake-oil salesmen: what makes for a successful and happy life?
…[An] engaging work. There are regrettably few studies of this
magnitude and even fewer accounts that so ably synthesize the
broader insights with the moving parts.
*The Australian*
To avid consumers of modern happiness literature, some of
Vaillant’s conclusions will seem shopworn (‘Happiness is love. Full
stop.’), while other results of the Grant Study appear to confirm
what social science has long posited—that a warm and stable
childhood environment is a crucial ingredient of success; or that
alcoholism is a strong predictor of divorce. But what’s unique
about the Grant Study is the freedom it gives Vaillant to look past
quick diagnosis, to focus on how patterns of growth can determine
patterns of wellbeing. Life is long, Vaillant seems to be saying,
and lots of shit happens. What is true in one stage of a man’s life
is not true in another. Previously divorced men are capable of long
and loving marriages. There is a time to monitor cholesterol
(before age 50) and a time to ignore it. Self-starting, as a
character trait, is relatively unimportant to flourishing early in
life but very important at the end of it. Socially anxious men
struggle for decades in emotional isolation and then mature past
it—relatively speaking. Triumphs of Experience is not only a
history of how the Grant men adapted (or not) to life over 70-plus
years, but of how author and science grew up alongside them. Yet
what unifies Triumphs is the same question posed originally by
Bock, the study’s founder: What factors meaningfully and reliably
predict the good life? Vaillant’s mission is to uncover the
‘antecedents of flourishing.’
*Daily Beast*
Offers broadly applicable evidence about how everything from early
maturity to grandparents’ longevity is likely to affect flourishing
throughout life… It is hard to overstate the wealth of the data
provided in Triumphs of Experience or the ambition of the project,
composed of survey responses, health records, and interviews. This
archive of human life is poised to answer questions shorter studies
can barely hint at… Vaillant offers striking conclusions about a
range of factors affecting human flourishing.
*New Republic online*
Reading like a storybook, the case histories of the individuals
provide fascinating insights about how the subjects tackled
challenges or succumbed to setbacks. Vaillant superbly explains how
these lifelong experiences sculpted these men’s final years.
Readers can learn more about themselves and what they may expect
from life by reading this revelatory and absorbing book.
*San Francisco Book Review*
George Vaillant’s book on the development and well-being of a
longitudinal sample of men, now in their nineties and studied
regularly since they were undergraduates at Harvard University,
reads like a riveting detective tale… He has a thought-provoking
story to tell about the lifelong significance of loving care… Brief
life-story vignettes illustrate movingly how adult development and
maturation is a lifelong process that strongly relates to the
transformative power of receiving and giving love… [The book’s]
well-evidenced wisdoms on the significance of nurturing
relationships offer new multidisciplinary perspectives on the
complex issue of nature versus nurture (much needed at a time when
medical science and genetics once more dominate studies of human
development) and on the lifelong costs of childhood emotional
neglect.
*Times Higher Education*
This fascinating book of ‘numbers’ and ‘pictures’ is the final
summary volume of a longitudinal psychosocial study focused on the
optimum health of 268 males from Harvard College classes… This book
is well worth reading for the discoveries contained in its pages;
it has the potential to advance knowledge about adult
development.
*Choice*
A fascinating account of the 268 individuals selected for the
Harvard Study of Adult Development… Vaillant has done a wonderful
job summarizing the study, discussing its major findings, and
communicating his enthusiasm for every aspect of the project, which
became his life’s work starting in 1966. The study has been
investigating what makes a successful and healthy life. Initially,
this meant looking for potential officer material for the military.
Vaillant established what he called ‘the Decathlon of Flourishing—a
set of ten accomplishments in late life that covered many different
facets of success.’ With humor and intriguing insights, the author
shows how progress in health studies and the passage of time
contributed to the constant ‘back and forth between nature and
nurture.’ During Vaillant’s tenure, human maturation and resilience
became the focus, and now biology is reasserting itself in the form
of DNA studies and fMRI imaging, the seeds for future research. The
author considers the study’s greatest contributions to be a
demonstration that human growth continues long after adolescence,
the world’s longest and most thorough study of alcoholism, and its
identification and charting of involuntary coping mechanisms.
Inspiring when reporting these successes, his personal approach to
discovery repeatedly draws readers in as he leads up to the account
of his realization that the true value of a human life can only be
fully understood in terms of the cumulative record of the entire
life span. Joyful reading about a groundbreaking study and its
participants.
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
Vaillant’s fascination with the human condition and his deep
insights about development make him a great storyteller, adept at
elegantly conveying the essence of humanity.
*Laura L. Carstensen, Director, Stanford Center on Longevity*
George Vaillant tells the story of the Grant Study men though age
91. This is, arguably, the most important study of the life course
ever done. But it is, inarguably, the one most brimming with
wisdom. If you are preparing for the last quarter of your life,
this is a MUST read.
*Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness*
What makes a good life? Most people would just speculate, cite
one-off examples, perhaps reference a personal religious
doctrine—or just shrug. But shouldn't we have at least some
scientific answers to this question by now? Actually, we do. The
Grant Study has followed a group of men for their entire adult
lives. It has tracked them for over 75 years. What factors make for
a good life? How does personality, marriage, children, career,
friends and lifestyle contribute to fulfillment over the course of
decades? Most studies last weeks or months. The Grant Study is
still going on. It’s one of the most illuminating glimpses into
what makes life meaningful.
*The Week*
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