What did George Vaillant do

'59, is a big, handsome, humorous psychiatrist who appears to be at least a decade younger than his 66 years.His work is based on research of over 800 men and women spanning 60 years.They were all between 40 and 70 when they wrote about aging..If you see footprints leading to the other side, step in them..'at a time when people are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human.He received his medical degree from harvard medical school, did his psychiatric residency at the massachusetts mental health center, and later completed psychoanalytic training at the boston.

Vaillant's model of adult development does not claim, as did havighurst (1972) long before him, to be predictive, but descriptive of successful aging.His father, archaeologist george c.Now george vaillant follows the men into their nineties, documenting for the first time what it is like to flourish far beyond conventional retirement.George vaillant is a harvard trained psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has extended freud's work on ego defense mechanisms.Ego defense mechanisms are ways of coping with the conflict between the id and superego and the resulting anxiety that threatens to overwhelm a person's ability to function.Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder.