Hidden beyond our sexual gender there exists a biological duality in how humans experience time, which Pos calls time gender. Alphas preferentially focus on the here and now and experience their past and future as situation-oriented. In contrast betas selectively focus on their unified past and future and are often inattentive to the present. Pos collected a substantial body of data to demonstrate the origin and generality of his theory.
It is almost inconceivable that this duality in personality remained unnoticed before. This is likely due to the fact that we often describe the behavior of men and women as expressing their sexual gender while it actually expresses their time gender.
The book describes how these two temporal perspectives begin to express themselves around age 6, when the child's autobiographic memory becomes active. They set the course for further personality development, including self-esteem, mood regulation, identity, thinking, education, occupation, social behavior in general, and sexuality, partnering and parenting in particular. As with so many brilliant ideas, those of Pos are amazingly clear and easy to grasp so that a lay person can easily grasp his tightly crafted compelling theory. Readers soon will see themselves and others in this book, which probes issues deeply. The book has special implications for counselors, it especially applies for those doing marital counseling, child or adolescent counseling, and vocational or educational counseling.
Toward the end, Pos gives his view on alpha/beta personality development an evolutionary perspective. This is an oeuvre unto itself. It is clear that Pos has woven not only one of the most comprehensivepersonality theories since Sigmund Freud gave us psychoanalysis, Carl Jung analytical psychology, and Jean Piaget cognitive psychology. He has presented it in a single volume.