When I was a teenager, my friend’s dad ran away with a young, Brazilian samba dancer who he had met at a Bachelor party. The grandfather of another friend of mine once told his family that he was going out to buy cigarettes, never to return. It is unknown what happened to him but is generally believed that he abandoned his family. Even more shocking was the behavior of a married man with children and a successful career who inexplicably committed suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage, without any forewarning or suicide note. These men were all middle aged at the time. Now, when I am 35 and have observed peculiar behavioral tendencies in some of my peers of similar age I have come to wonder if the occurrence of the “midlife crisis”, which has often been depicted in films (two notable examples are American Beauty and Falling Down), is something genuine. The focus of my essay will be on the male midlife crisis. Hopefully some female readers will still be able to relate to it as well, or at least gain some insight into the male psyche which may be more complex than at first blush, and more than most men are willing to admit. In this paper, I will argue that although the midlife crisis does not occur to everyone, its symptoms are almost universally recognized. The causes of the midlife crises may be many, but the essay will revolve around three possible concerns of the middle aged man; thoughts about death, his needs of self-realization and caring of the younger generation.
Definition of Midlife What is a midlife? The age range of midlife is dependent on life expectancy, cultural initiation rites and individual age. To some extent marriage, having children and starting a work career may be initiation rites to the midlife, which may also be the reason why the absence of a spouse, family or work may be an igniting spark to a crisis. Erikson’s influential Theory of Psycho-social Development sets the age range of middle adulthood between age 25 to 64 with the focus on ages 40 to 64. The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development defines midlife as the time stretching from 30 to 70 years of age, with 40 to 60 as the central period. In their 1999 study of 8,000 men and women ranging in age from 25 to 74 men aged 25 to 34 perceived 40 as the time of middle age, whereas men between 64 and 74 on average thought that 46 was the onset of middle age. The definition of midlife for this essay will be correspondingly generous but with the focus on the ages 40 to 60. Symptoms of a Midlife Crisis The psychological characteristics of an individual with a midlife crisis include a search of an ever changing and undefined goal or dream, remorse for one’s wrongs and goals not accomplished, a sense of humiliation when comparing oneself with more successful peers, a desire to act and look young and the need to spend more time alone or with friends. Individuals in a midlife crisis are often depressed, may abuse alcohol or other drugs (a sort of self-medication), acquire unusual or expensive items such as new technology or sports cars, pay special attention to their physical appearance such as covering baldness, enter relationships with people many years their junior or push their children too hard to excel in fields such as sports or academics (a way to compensate for own failures). Immediate Causes of Midlife Crises The midlife crisis can be triggered by life events or transitions that cause psychological stress. These possible events or transitions include declining health and reduced sex drive, death of parents, unemployment, work or marriage dissatisfaction or career setbacks. A long running skit on an annual Swedish National Sports Awards Gala by the comedian Robert Gustavsson was about a middle aged and successful speedway driver who claimed not to the bitter never to have received an award, although he displayed a large degree of resentment and cynicism in his act. Viagra has helped many middle aged men with their sexual dysfunctions but the later midlife is also a time of declining health and some aspects of intellectual functioning, which may cause distress. Age related midlife crises often occur from the ages of 40 to 60 with the average onset of 46 and last for approximately 3-10 years. The time of the crisis may however vary depending on what triggered it. For example, a survey study by Ian Stanford in 1968 of 1,100 male executives indicated that about 80 percent between 34 and 42 were hit by a crisis. In regards to these managers, their crisis is very likely to have been career related; when reality does not match the dreams they used to dream, to paraphrase the famous song from the musical Les Miserables: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6OH7FoWoQ Is The Midlife Crisis Universal? Not everyone has a midlife crisis. According to the previous mentioned study by the MacArthur Foundation, 23 percent of the older participants acknowledged they had experienced one. 8 percent believed they have had an age-related midlife crisis. Therefore, the midlife crisis is not as inevitable as death and for some the symptoms may be so mild that it may not be appropriate to call it a crisis. The relatively low incidence of midlife crises at middle age has led some researchers, such as Wethington (2000) to suggest a more neutral term for the occurrence, such as “midlife transition”. As with all psychological issues, the occurrence of a midlife crisis is most likely an interaction of vulnerability, dispositional and protective factors, environmental stressors and cultural influences. The concept itself originated in Western Psychology and its occurrence may not be universal. It is probably influenced by the perception of old age, which may differ across cultures. In some cultures, such as Kenya, Samoa and India, middle age is a time of veneration and respect but may be less so in West’s “culture of youth”. The anthropologist Margaret Mead believed that depression would be common among middle aged men in cultures where physical strength is highly valued. But in cultures that value wisdom and life skills middle aged men may be happier. Mead once mentioned that older Australian aboriginal men get “most of the younger women and it isn’t reported to have depressed them.” Because the symptoms of a midlife crisis are so diverse and the age range of midlife so broad, some researchers reject the universal notion of a midlife crisis altogether. From one perspective, it can be argued that the only thing that two midlife crises have in common, if experienced independently by two different men, is that they are crises and that they occurred in midlife. Shek (1996) studied the midlife crisis in 1,501 Chinese men and women aged 30 to 60 and found no clear rise or peak in any particular age group. However, it must be noted that Shek only investigated participants that were in their midlife and did not compare it with people that were younger or older. His findings also demonstrated that around half of the participants expressed work related problems or concerns about personal achievement. In addition, the idea of the midlife crisis seems to be existent in Chinese culture, as popular Chinese sayings include “When a person reaches the midlife years, everything is sad.” and “When a person reaches the midlife years, everything is worrying.” There are also other arguments for midlife as a time of crisis and transition. Firstly, individual happiness ratings have a U-shaped curve during a person’s lifetime. According to a study by the University of Warwick in 2012, our happiness levels reach a low point at the age of 45 but then increase with age. This U-shaped curve of happiness has also been found in apes. A study of 508 chimpanzees and orangutans by the use of raters familiar with the individual apes suggested that apes in their late 20s to mid-30s (the equivalent of middle age in apes) were less happy than individuals that were younger and older. Secondly, suicide rates of men are higher at older age but recent statistics from United States suggest that it is the highest for men aged 45 to 54. Similar tendencies of the suicide statistics can be found in other countries as well. Even though it is true that we may have problems and crises in both earlier and later life, from one perspective our entire lifespan may be seen as a crisis, it generally seems to reach its nadir during our midlife. Why is this so? Is The Midlife Crisis Due to Death Awareness? The Canadian psychoanalyst Eliott Jacques who coined the actual term “midlife crisis” in 1965 believed it was the time when adults come to realize their own mortality and how much time that is left of their life. “Memento mori” – “Remember that you will die” was what the Romans used to say. Jacques’ explanation hints a Freudian influence, as Freud was the first to suggest that midlife leads to a power shift in our inner struggle between the life and death instincts, Libido and Thanatos. According to Freud, our Libido is the strongest during the first part of our life, while Thanatos is gaining the upper hand at the latter part. Directed outwards, Thanatos is an aggressive, violent force, but inwards it desires rest or death. It is the negation of the will to live, designed to prepare us for the inevitable. After all, Freud stated that the aim of all life is death. Or as paraphrased by agent Smith in the movie Matrix Revolutions; “The purpose of all life is to end”. So do middle aged men want to become a “stone among the stones" as Camus wrote in his novel “A happy death”? Do they like Job curse the day they were born? Although the Elephants’ graveyard seems to be a myth it is true that old and sick dogs have a tendency to wander off alone. It is believed that this is due to their pack mentality. Like wolves they do not want to slow down their pack mates or leave them vulnerable to attack. “I am just going out and it may take some time” was also what captain Lawrence Oates told his party during the disastrous British Antarctic Expedition, walking out from the tent to his death in a blizzard, fully aware of the fact that his severely frost-bitten feet were slowing down the others and reducing the chances of their survival. It is interesting to note that the great apes, who seem to have a U-shaped curve of happiness like humans also are one of the few animals who have self-awareness and understand death (in the sense that they mourn their dead). Another argument for the death instinct of the middle aged is that this was the usual time of death in earlier times, when life was nasty, brutish and short. During the Old Stone Age, only about 10 percent lived beyond the age of 60, with an average life expectancy of around 50 (not taking infant mortality into account). This pattern did not start to change until the Medieval Age (excluding the time of the Black Plague). The professor of statistical mathematics H.O. Lancaster has made some interesting findings which he has published in his book Expectations of life (1990). Investigating a larger sample of males from the English aristocracy 1200 to 1745 he discovered that if you were alive at the age of 21 you were generally expected to live on to between the ages of 60 and 70. Although the life expectancy of those not belonging to the nobility must have been shorter, it seems that this was the time when people of old age were becoming more common. The age of 50 that used to be the end of most people's lives has now become only the first part of it. It is like we are living two lives today, with different personality, consciousness and character. It may be only natural that this can create a vacuum and confusion on what to do next now when we get to live for a second time. And it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks. The inevitability and danger of death must have been on everyone’s mind during the modern early period, young as well as old, as suggested by the skulls and skeletons symbolism of the medieval age and the renaissance (just think of Shakespeare’s Hamlet or the "Dance of Death" so often depicted in medieval church paintings), but it may have been even more so for those who had death knocking at their door. The elderly may have seen themselves as cheating death or playing chess with the devil, as depicted on a medieval painting in the Taby Church of Sweden and later immortalized in the film “The Seventh Seal”. Or even worse, people may have believed that some some elderly men had made pacts with the devil to prolong their age, which may have contributed to the witch hunts at this time. It is estimated that between 15 to 25 % of those executed during the witch trials were middle aged and elderly men. At the same time, it seems to be those middle aged who may embrace death because they despise old age. According to the religion of the Vikings, it was impossible to come to Valhalla after death, a kind of Viking heaven, if you had not died in battle. Michael Jackson, who died mysteriously at the age of 50, said in a taped interview with Rabbi Boteach that he thought that growing old was “the ugliest thing”. These men “do not go gentle into that good night…”, instead they “rage, rage against the dying of the light”, to quote Dylan Thomas. Perhaps they want to go down with their guns blazing, like General Custer, Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid and Che Guevara. Most middle aged men, however, do not desire to go down in a ball of fire. Although Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Pastor Jim Jones were all middle aged at the time of their worst atrocities, perpetrators of mass murder are not over-represented by middle aged men. It may be more likely that instead of wanting to die, most middle aged men fear death, very much like the artificial intelligence computer HAL 9000 in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY Eliott Jacques, who did not suffer from cancer to the jaw like Sigmund Freud, had a more positive view on the midlife crisis. He thought that the awareness of our mortality could be sublimated into creative energy. Indeed, midlife is often a time when many artists are most creative. It may be due to the human tendency of procrastination; the closer you are to a deadline the harder you tend to work. Similarly, it may be at the time when you feel that your powers are declining, that you may want to express yourself artistically. To some extent, therefore all art may be a kind of testimony, although not always as extensive as the 1,905 suicide note left behind by the 35 year old suicide and psychology graduate Mitchell Heisman. Heisman’s suicide note had a complete bibliography and if interested, you may read the note here: http://www.suicidenote.info/ebook/suicide_note.pdf The Midlife Man´s Quest for Immortality Eliott Jacques and Freud’s ideas have many things in common with Terror Management Theory, which explain the motivation of many behaviors through the psychological conflict between wanting to live and the self-awareness of that death is inevitable. Self-esteem and cultural worldviews are defense mechanisms against the anxiety elicited by mortality awareness. When people are reminded of their own mortality, which is called mortality salience, it affects their well-being and their support for their own social group and cultural worldviews are strengthened (to defend against the death anxiety). It is like when Kemmerich dies in the book “All quiet on the western front”. As soon as the protagonist Paul leaves the hospital after collecting Kemmerich’s belongings, he experiences the world more vividly. He lives, and feels a hunger “greater than comes from the belly alone.” A man can gain illusory immortality through his children or investing in and creating culture. It is what Bo Kaspers Orkester sing in the song “Vi kommeraldrigatt do” (We will live forever): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF2C6Qig7k8 “Write a bestseller, donate money to an institute… have children, or start a World War… We will live forever, we will never die”. Terror Management Theory even posits that religion was invented to help humans cope with their own mortality. It is also possible that the crisis of middle aged men is of a religious art, as it seems to be a time in one’s life when one often is the least spiritual and may doubt the existence of a God, even if one is religious. Elderly people seem more religious; the average age of Popes at election since 1503 has been 64. Ambrose Bierce’s famous short story “An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has the same theme of creating an illusion to avoid death. A man sentenced to death by hanging imagines the rope breaking and him escaping back to his wife and children, just before reality strikes him and the noose breaks his neck. Here is a film adaptation of the short story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuP5kUQro40 In the same vein, it may be the reason why so many people become creative at old age. For example, John Locke did not publish any of his writings until the age of 57. Cultural immortality may even be the underlying motive for what you are reading right now. The Midlife Crisis as a Developmental Phase Carl Jung and Erik Erikson have a more positive view on the midlife than Sigmund Freud and Eliott Jacques. Jung, who himself suffered from a midlife crisis between the ages of 38 and 42 believed that midlife was a time of individuation; a process in which an individual is forming his uniqueness, integrates all aspects of himself and attempts to find his authentic self. After all, a middle aged man has had many experiences in his life and it may be time to sit down and organize them. Questions such as “Is this what I wanted?”, “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?” arise. Erikson’s influential theory on the Stages of Psycho-social Development follows the same principle of viewing the human life as a journey of self-realization. The theory explains the eight stages that humans are passing from infancy to old age. These stages are a function of an interaction of biological and social forces, and are similar across cultures. In each stage, there is a psycho-social crisis in which a person confronts and attempts to master new challenges. Each psycho-social crisis consists of two conflicting forces, one favorable and one unfavorable. If an individual manages to reconcile the conflict, favoring the positive force, he will have a healthy development. If you have had many unresolved conflicts in your earlier stages, these conflicts will build up and cause trouble at later stages. They may therefore lead to a delayed psycho-social development, which may be one reason why some people are acting much younger their age. To Erikson, midlife is a time of raised awareness of oneself but also of the external world. According to Erikson’s theory man undergoes a crisis of caring during their middle adulthood. The middle aged man can either choose the path of “generativity”, being concerned of guiding the next generation, of being productive, socially responsible and altruistic, becoming a mentor. The middle aged man can also choose stagnation; becoming self-centered and unwilling to help society move forward. From this perspective, role models for the psychologically healthy middle aged man are the Bill Gates, Barack Obamas and Steve Jobs of the world, whereas a middle aged man prone for depression and crisis would be more like the grumpy, old, Ebenezer Scrooge. Conclusion It seems to be every man’s wish to leave a mark on the world and to share his experiences with and guide the younger generation, maybe through cultural artifacts if he does not have children of his own. To some extent, when a middle aged man enters a relationship with a very young woman, there may be the same father instinct at work. When I was a teenager one of my female friends had a relationship with a man who was 30 years her senior. When I once met him, he was talking about her as she was his daughter, praising her artistic ability. What is interesting is that a midlife crisis may come both of not having accomplished what you are expected to have done at midlife, such as having a family and a steady job, it may also come out of being caught in a spider web of midlife responsibilities that you do not really want. My friend, whose father ran away with a Brazilian samba dancer, believed that he had done so because he had married and had children when he was too young and therefore never have had a chance to live without a family. It may well be like this quote attributed to Socrates: “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you will become happy, if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.” One middle aged man feels trapped, another man lonely, but a happily married man has few bad thoughts. Men may fear death but they also fear suffering, which may be the reason why some men choose to live on and some choose to die or fade away at the time of their midlife. In this essay I have argued that a few of the problems that many men may encounter in their midlife is the realization of their own mortality but also their need for self-realization and guidance of the new generation. These issues and needs may be connected. Man wants to have children or leave a cultural mark in history to create an illusory sense of immortality but he also desires to become self-actualized and immortalized through his achievements. By doing this, he can also help others. Hopefully the middle aged man’s philosophy can provide the younger generation with advice on how to deal with life issues. The Synoptic Gospels mention that at the time of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, there was a period of darkness that lasted from around noon to 3 p.m. Some researchers have argued that this may have been a solar eclipse. This temporary solar eclipse may be a good metaphor for the midlife crisis. The midlife crisis is a temporary obscuration of the sun at midday. It is true that there is an appointed time for everything, but at midlife, there is still time. If you stay true to yourself, it will only get better. Remember that after Jesus Christ was crucified, he was resurrected.
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AuthorThis is my class blog for IB Psychology. Here I will publish reflections on psychology, reviews of psychology books, recommended links, lecture notes, and information on psychology topics that are not covered by the syllabus. You are free to add comments or ask me questions. Archives
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