Session 11 · Facilitator
Slide 5a Insert: The Drive Has a Name (Erikson)
SESSION 11 · MISSION & THE ONE THING · DECK r1 INSERT · ONE SLIDE, THREE MINUTES
The Drive Has a Name
Erikson's generativity, taught once. Insert as slide 5a, between Goal vs Purpose (5) and Where a Mission Comes From (6). Three minutes out of the construction block; the timing spine and cut order are on the last page.
Why here, and why only once
Generativity is everywhere in the program as a label and nowhere as a lesson. The men have circled it on the Values Inventory, read it in the Wisdom Across Traditions table, and heard it cited on the Health Case slide — but nobody has yet said what Erikson found. Session 11 is where the "for whom" in a man's sentence becomes unavoidable: the Contribution Hypothesis from S8 ends in "for ______," the So-That ladder ends in someone, and the Galatians Test fails every sentence that terminates in the man himself. Erikson names the drive behind all three. Scripture names its object. Three minutes, one slide, and then the room goes back to building the sentence.
SLIDE 5a · CONSTRUCTION · 3 MINUTES
Slide 5a — The Drive Has a Name
16:9, house palette. Eyebrow, title, three columns, a bottom bar. Body ≥ 14 pt on the slide.
Element | On the slide |
Eyebrow | CONSTRUCTION · WHERE THE PULL COMES FROM |
Title | The Drive Has a Name |
Subtitle | Erik Erikson, 1950: the task of the second half is generativity — or stagnation. |
Column 1 · THE DRIVE | Generativity "The concern in establishing and guiding the next generation." The urge to make, mentor, and hand on — felt as a pull, not a duty. Erikson called it the mark of the mature adult. |
Column 2 · THE FAILURE | Stagnation The man who stops giving begins "to indulge himself as if he were his own one and only child." Self-absorption. The seven ways to coast, in one sentence from 1950. |
Column 3 · THE EVIDENCE | Seventy years of data Vaillant's Harvard Study: generativity in midlife was among the strongest predictors of flourishing in the seventies. McAdams: the most generative adults tell their lives as redemption stories — the reading you did at Session 6. |
Bottom bar (gold) | "I am what survives of me." — Erikson · "Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation." — Psalm 71:18 |
Footer | Erikson describes the drive. Scripture supplies the object. Your sentence names the person. |
Speaker notes
Slide 5 has just separated a goal from a purpose — Agassi won Wimbledon and felt nothing. This slide answers the question that leaves in the room: if the pull toward purpose isn't ambition, what is it? Name Erikson once, give the two words, one line of evidence, and land on the Psalm. Do not teach the eight stages. Do not say "psychosocial." The framework is yours; the pull is theirs. Bridge to slide 6: Buechner and Leider will tell them where the pull points.
Watch for the man who hears "next generation" and thinks grandchildren only. Erikson's word was wide — a craft handed to an apprentice, a church nursery, a younger man at work. Say so if you see it. The Contribution Hypothesis already has the range: "sit with men who just got laid off" passed the test at S8.
FACILITATOR GUIDE · MOVEMENT TWO · CONSTRUCTION · INSERT AFTER SLIDE 5
Slide 5a · The Drive Has a Name
3 minutes · 0:21 – 0:24 · Encounter
This is the one place in the program where Erikson is taught rather than cited. Keep it to three minutes. The men have already circled Generativity as a value at Session 6 and read the Wisdom Across Traditions row in the Session 1 guide; tonight they find out it is not a value they chose but a drive they were built with, and that it has a documented failure mode. That is the whole teaching. Then the room goes back to the sentence.
WHAT YOU SAY “In 1950 a psychologist named Erik Erikson mapped the whole human life as a series of tasks, and he said the task of our stage — yours and mine — comes down to one word against another. Generativity: the concern to establish and guide the next generation. Or stagnation. And he described stagnation in a sentence that should sting a little: the man who stops giving begins to indulge himself as if he were his own one and only child. Seventy years of data since then say he was right. The men who were generative at fifty were the men flourishing at seventy-five. And the men who told their lives as redemption stories — the reading you did at Session 6 — were the generative ones. So the pull you felt when you wrote ‘for ______’ in November is not ambition coming back. It is the thing you were made for, arriving on schedule. Erikson could name the drive. He could not tell you who it is for. Psalm 71 can: till I declare your power to the next generation. Your sentence tonight names the person.” |
What you do
· Name him once. Erikson, 1950, two words. If a man asks, Childhood and Society is the book; Vaillant's Aging Well has the data. Nothing more from the front.
· Point back, not forward. The Values Inventory row, the Session 6 redemption reading, the "for ______" in the S8 sentence. Every reference is to something they already wrote.
· Land on the Psalm and stop. The footer line — Erikson describes the drive, Scripture supplies the object, your sentence names the person — is the bridge to slide 6. Say it and advance.
· Widen "next generation" if you hear it narrow. A grandson counts. So does the apprentice, the laid-off man, the seventeen-year-old at Urban Impact. Erikson's own word was generative — it includes what a man makes and mends, not only whom he raises.
ACCURACY GUARDRAILS "Establishing and guiding the next generation" and "his own one and only child" are Erikson's words (Childhood and Society, 1950, stage seven). "I am what survives of me" is from Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968). Vaillant's finding is from the Harvard Study of Adult Development (Aging Well, 2002); say "among the strongest predictors," not a percentage. McAdams' redemption–generativity link is The Redemptive Self (2006) — already in the S6 guardrails. Erikson was not writing from a Christian frame; the Foundations Brief places him: describes the drive, Scripture supplies the object (Psalm 71:18, Titus 2). |
PARTICIPANT GUIDE · ONE BOX · AFTER GOAL VS PURPOSE
The Drive Has a Name
You circled Generativity on the Values Inventory in October — "Erikson's term for the task of later life: investing in and guiding the next generation. The antidote to stagnation." Tonight it stops being a word on a list. Erikson's finding was that the second half of a life is a contest between two words: generativity, the pull to make and mentor and hand on, and stagnation, which he described as a man beginning to indulge himself as if he were his own one and only child. Seventy years of research since — Vaillant at Harvard, McAdams at Northwestern — say the generative men are the ones flourishing at seventy-five, and that they are the same men who read their lives the way you read yours at Session 6: as redemption. Erikson could name the drive. He could not say who it is for. "Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation" (Psalm 71:18). Your mission sentence names the person. Who is my "next generation"? (a name, not a category — and it need not be a grandchild)
|
Timing spine and cut order, revised
Block | Was | Now |
Re-entry (slides 1–4) | 0:00 – 0:18 | unchanged |
Construction (5, 5a, 6–12) | 0:18 – 0:45 | 0:18 – 0:45 · slide 5a takes 3 min; recover it by trimming slide 4 (What Did You Find Out?) from four reports to three |
Clearness Room (13–19) | 0:45 – 1:20 | unchanged |
Send-off (20–23) | 1:20 – 1:30 | unchanged |
Cut order | 5 → 12 → shorten 4 → 19 to a glance | 5 → 5a → 12 → shorten 4 → 19 to a glance. If 5 is cut, 5a still stands on its own; open with "the pull toward purpose has a name." |
Two small fixes elsewhere
· Session 6 Facilitator Guide, Facilitator's Kitchen. One added sentence after the McAdams guardrail: "The men who read their lives as redemption are, in McAdams' data, the generative ones — say it in one line at the Harvest, because Session 11 will pick it up."
· Session 1 Participant Guide, Wisdom Across Traditions. The table is captioned "coming in Session 10" (the Faith Foundation session, now S9). S9 r1 does not carry it. Either add the table to the S9 Participant Guide's Going Deeper page, or change the caption to "coming in Sessions 9 and 11" — Erikson's row now lands at S11.