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The Human Odyssey: Navigating the Twelve Stages of Life— Thomas Armstrong
For millennia, from the Sphinx's riddle in Oedipus Rex to discussions of the implications of our longer lifespan in modern times, people have pondered the stages of life and sought their meaning for who we are and who we will become. Building on previous works about the human life-cycle and its constituent stages, celebrated expert, writer, and speaker Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D traces our lives from conception to death in The Human Odyssey: Navigating the Twelve Stages of Life,, detailing twelve life stages and explaining their tasks and challenges. Dr. Armstrong explains that he wrote the book because he "believe[s] that when we understand the unique features and challenges of each stage of life we are better able to comprehend and meet the needs of the infants, children, adolescents, young adults, midlife adults, and aging adults in our lives."
In addition to describing each stage and laying out the importance and purpose of each part of life, Dr. Armstrong gives contemporary anecdotes and statistics and weaves in examples and ideas from history, literature, philosophy, myth, and cultural rituals from around the world. He also deals with the life stages in both biological and spiritual terms, a unique approach that he hopes will bridge and integrate the contributions of previous works that have tended to stress only one side or the other. In addition, Dr. Armstrong closes each chapter with personal exercises and suggestions for how to apply the lessons of the chapter to oneself, to one's family and friends, and to the community at large. He also gives the reader a list of films, books, and organizations that speak to the various phases of life and their role in people's development.
A frequent contributor to publications from Ladies Home Journal and Parenting to The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and a guest on several national news programs such as The Today Show and CNN, he has written thirteen books with world-wide circulation in over twenty languages and his works has been the subject of pieces in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Redbook, and more. Dr. Armstrong has also spoken to hundreds of audiences across the United States and in sixteen countries. His previous work has focused on multiple intelligences and has also looked extensively at children and learning.
Dr. Armstrong's books have won myriad awards and The Human Odyssey has been praised by many other researchers and writers in the field. Joseph Chilton Pearce, the author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg and Magical Child, calls The Human Odyssey "superb, magnificent, astonishing, unique, engrossing, eminently readable, informative, enjoyable, entertaining, profound." Ralph Metzner, Ph.D, author of Maps of Consciousness, says that "Armstrong shows the way to a truly integrated understanding of the complexities of the human life cycle."
Dr. Armstrong lives in Northern California and maintains a weblog to talk about the ideas and questions raised by The Human Odyssey.
—Caroline Patton
