Macro-History as Metaphor for Biography: An Essay on Macro and Micro History

The article is an effort to relate biography, the history of an individual, and sociography, the history of a society. The focus is on the deeper aspects of both; on personality in the case of the individual and cosmology or deeper structure for the society. Eight models of the phases of human personality, and eight models of the phases or stages of social deep structure are then presented, with efforts to use the personal models on society and the social models on personality. The article is an exercise in the possible isomorphism between the two. The cyclical theories which applied to societies were found particularly useful in modeling individual life-cycles; the linear theories less so because they "condemn" the individual to a definite final state of affairs.