Rev. Teresa Schwartz

In Erik Erikson’s model of psychosocial developmental stages, the latter years of life are marked by the work of integration versus despair. This is not a passive process—but hard work and is in some ways, paradoxical: integration can only be found by processing our own despair. While Erikson understood this primarily to be the task of the older adult, it is also the task of being human, and being human religiously.