The Existential Necessity of Midlife Change

2022

The CAGE centre is funded partly by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK. Ahmed Tohamy would like to thank Nuffield College and the University of Oxford's Clarendon Fund for their research support during his masters and doctoral studies. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

The concept of a midlife crisis remains strong in the popular culture of the United States, but this popular concept is not supported in psychological research. Theorists such as Jung, Erikson, Levinson, and Jaques provided a theoretical foundation or research in support of the midlife crisis concept, but subsequent research repeatedly disproves this as a universal concept that applies primarily to the male gender in their forties, which is the caricature of midlife crises. The research does support that only a small percentage of Americans experience a midlife crisis, it is equally distributed between males and females, and it may happen anytime before forty or even into the sixties.

Economics Bulletin, 2012

Vikalpa, 1976

Taking the mid-life crisis as its starting point, this paper discusses some of the psychological problems which affect the organizational role of the middle-aged executive. These problems relate to setbacks in career and the ways the executive and the organization try to deal with these failures, the career successes which too can be sometimes a source of bitterness, the retirement or death of older "sponsors" in the organization with whom the now middle-aged individual had begun his working life, and, finally, the strain in the relationship with the younger generation entering the organization. The author concludes that it is only through a radical self-confrontation at this point of life, the questioning of his identity, and a review of what he wanted earlier, what he now is, and what he can reasonably still expect that the middle aged executive can make his unique psychological contribution to the organization-the maintenance of its internal system.

Journal of Adult Development, 2005

Recent advances in life-span developmental psychology suggest that individual lives can be characterized as a series of interrelated transitions. The question of when and how past transitions have been experienced and how they affect subsequent ageing may be critical to understanding midlife adjustment. The aim of this study is (a) to investigate timing and emotional valence of experienced normative and silent transitions of middle-aged persons, and (b) to discover the impact of past transitions on current well-being and on anticipation of old age. Analysis of interview data from 268 persons suggest a considerable stability in the basic structure of human biography, but also evidence for age group, gender, and personality differences in the subjective perception of the life-course, adjustment and future anticipation in middle age. Emotional valence of puberty and that of personality variables were found to be important predictors of actual psychological well-being and anticipation of old age.

2008

Spending less on people with worse health is poor national policy and its time we stopped doing it."

European Management Journal, 1994

Executives passing the mid-point of their lives in business are prone to anxiety and preoccupation with the meaning of the rest of their lives. Manfred Kets de Vries explores some of the psychological traumas that can arise from physical ageing, loss of sexual potency and generational competition. Often, childhood experiences contribute to the failure to adjust, and marital tensions add to the problem. But things do not have to be so negative. The author suggests some practical and appealing ways of overcoming mid-life angst.

2015

as it is still far off and he rather thought that the difficulties of the midlife transition were to be found in profound and unusual psychological changes. To describe this, he used the metaphor of the daily course of the sun at ‘noon’ (to represent when we move into middle age) and for when our body characteristics, such as our voice tones change in the afternoon of life. Jung opined that it is in the psychic realm of midlife, rather than in the physical, that there is more transformation. Some human beings are utterly illequipped for the second half of life and often believe that the truths and ideals of the first half of their lives will suffice throughout the lifespan. An important but apparent contradiction in Jung’s theory is that he believed that it was very important to spend time on one’s self in the second half of life, but that in the first half the opposite was true. The second half of the lifespan should be a time when the self becomes illuminated and that living in th...

This essay discusses aspects of the aging process and the degree to which they can affect our psychological well-being and overall health outcomes.