Midlife crisis (psychology)

TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Developmental psychology; personality; psychological methodologies; psychopathology; psychotherapy; social psychology; stress

Midlife crisis describes a period of self-doubt and searching between the ages of thirty and sixty. It is a cultural phenomenon and has no formal diagnosis. First identified formally by Carl Jung in the 1930s, midlife crisis received a great deal of popular attention during and after the 1970s. People in many traditional and non-Western cultures experience such changes less frequently and often deal with them as ordinary changes in a cycle of life.

Introduction

Midlife crisis (also known as the midlife transition) in Western societies often involves a period of self-doubt that can afflict people during the midst of life, usually during their forties (but as early as their thirties or as late as age sixty). Self-doubts often involve the passage of youthful ambitions and hopes, as the recognition dawns that certain career and romantic goals are no longer attainable, along with the anticipation of old age and its limitations. When a midlife crisis afflicts women, it is sometimes related to menopause, which is often called the change of life.

Some people experience severe enough psychological problems during a midlife crisis to seek some sort of counseling. Although the condition has never been formalized as a diagnostic category, a minority of those who believe they are afflicted with it may require psychotherapy. Although rare, some manifestations of midlife crisis can be severe and may include suicide attempts.

History of the Idea

About the same time that Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, argued that adulthood was a largely stable state bereft of important changes, a lesser-known author, French folklorist Arnold van Gennep, in The Rites of Passage (1909), described ancient ceremonies that celebrated an individual’s transitions as passages of life. He saw such changes not as crises, but as opportunities for a person to accumulate new knowledge and, thus, new status in society. Western society lacks rituals that guide most people through life’s transitions.

The idea that people may experience dramatic psychological changes in midlife was first introduced to the theory of psychology during the 1930s by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Jung compared midlife to noon in a diurnal cycle. About “noon” in the cycle of life, he theorized, significant change is most likely to take place in the human psyche. Jung did not see midlife as a time of crisis, however, but one in which people could rediscover qualities that had been underdeveloped or neglected during the first half of life.

Since the 1970s, the concept has received copious popular attention that provoked academic research, indicating that most people experience a midlife crisis in a mild way. At that time, Gail Sheehy’s popular book Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (1976) enhanced discussion of midlife crisis in much of the Western, industrial world.

Causes and Consequences

Midlife crisis may be intensified by the death of a family member or lover, or career-related stress. Midlife crisis in men is more likely to be triggered by work-related issues, but menopause in a partner can contribute to a man’s yearning for a younger partner, contributing to marital infidelity. Such crises also tend to last longer in men (three to ten years), than in women (two to five years). Midlife concerns for women are more likely to involve changes related to menopause, children leaving home, or demands related to caring for live-in parents and children at the same time. However, the midlife profile of an increasing number of women in the workforce may more closely resemble that of men.

People, ideas, and possessions that once brought excitement and joy may be rejected as boring and out-of-date. A sense of excitement may be sought in unusual (and sometimes risky) adventures. A spouse may be rejected as an impediment to a new life; formerly enduring love may be questioned, as those who experience midlife changes (usually men, in this case) seek new, hopefully passionate, intimate relationships.

Men who define their self-worth according to job performance may be more prone to midlife crisis if they lose a job in middle age. Women, who are more likely to define self-worth through human (especially family) relationships, may feel inadequate when these change, even through ordinary stages of life, such as when children grow up and leave home, contributing to empty-nest syndrome. Some women cope with such losses by going back to school or taking jobs.

Midlife crisis is often characterized by a person’s search for a dream that is difficult to define (and, therefore, to attain). At the same time, life to date may be characterized as without meaning, a state of mind that sometimes leads to depression (a chronic lack of interest in life). Symptoms of serious depression may be accompanied by striking changes in eating habits, insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, nonspecific aches and pains, irritability, and even thoughts of or attempts at suicide. Midlife crisis may be more intense for people who at other ages have had low self-esteem, have repressed interpersonal conflict, feel inadequate, and have been emotionally distant. People who easily experience shame and rejection may find such experiences amplified at middle age.

Remorse regarding onset of aging can contribute, most often in Anglo-American men, to abuse of alcohol and other drugs, acquisition of luxury goods symbolic of youth (most notably items of personal adornment, such as tattoos, body piercings, flashy clothing, and jewelry), as well as other consumer goods symbolic of youth, such as motorcycles.

Cross-Cultural Attributes

Some critics contend that midlife crisis is more of a psychological urban legend than a reality. People experience identity concerns at other ages (most notably adolescence), and concern about aging is hardly unique to middle life. Major life changes, such as a divorce or loss of a job, can provoke acute psychological reaction at any age. For the majority of people who do not experience a pronounced midlife crisis, the years thirty to sixty can be a time of general happiness and achievement that may be recalled in old age as “the good old days.” Some critics argue that the very popularity of the term “midlife crisis” may prompt some people in that age group to elevate ordinary anxieties to a psychological condition.

Midlife passages may be more stressful in societies in which people (such as ethnic minorities in the United States) must negotiate more than one culture in their daily lives. in the media complicate such situations. Ethnic traditions often come into conflict with mainstream values, creating additional anxieties. Such anxieties often bring people to more avid practice of traditions involving rituals that help define cultural expectations.

In many cultures, the attainment of middle age is not usually accompanied by unusual psychological stress and turmoil. Therefore, midlife crisis has been recognized as a cultural specific to technologically advanced Western societies. Self-doubt in the midst of life has been studied cross-culturally, and it has been found to be most intense in people with Anglo-American or European heritage. It is less frequent, and less intense, in Japan and India. The cultural obsession with youth that is prevalent in Western cultures probably contributes to a feeling of letdown after youth has passed.

People in several indigenous cultures believe that people change throughout their lives. Traditional stories (including some origin stories) allow for such changes. In Drawing from the Women’s Well: Reflections on the Life Passage of Menopause (1992), Joan Borton describes traditional rites of passage that honor menopause as a positive passage through a stage of life. Here, and elsewhere in many indigenous cultures, storytelling is instructive in negotiating life’s passages. In Western cultures, by contrast, stories are often relegated to childhood.

In The Fountain of Age, published in 1993 when she was seventy-two years old, feminist author Betty Friedan argues that looking at midlife as a decline from youth is a societal construct that demeans aging, whereas many traditional cultures esteem their elders. Friedan asserts that people continue to develop throughout life.

Many traditional stories told by indigenous groups center on a protagonist beset by conflict, anxiety, and adversity. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy’s origin story, which relates in mythical form historical events roughly a thousand years ago (1142 CE, according to research by Barbara Alice Mann and Jerry Fields of the University of Toledo), features the conversion of a formerly remarkably evil man (Tadadaho) to wisdom and political leadership at an advanced age. In the Iroquois origin story, the Peacemaker (Deganawidah) and his aid Hiawatha overcome Tadahaho’s evil genius and convert him to help found a confederacy of peace that replaced a history of bloodletting among the five Iroquois nations.

Conclusion

Whether it is real or imagined (or a combination), change in midlife, if properly understood and managed, need not result in depression or fractured relationships. It can result in profound personal redefinition and growth, leading to a richer later life. The shedding of old identifies often leads to the forging of new ones. Many psychologists have come to agree that life’s major struggles do not end in childhood and adolescence; redefinition extends to the end of life, and crisis, or transition, at midlife or even later can be part of such a change. The idea first posited by Freud that adulthood is a “mature” or stable state of life when large-scale change ceases is no longer common intellectual currency.

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