|
AGING AND PERSONALITY: CARL JUNG’S IDEA
It was Carl Jung who proposed the idea of the midlife crisis, made a household word in the 1970s by Gail Sheehy\'s popular book Passages. He begins his discussion with the time of life from puberty to about the mid-thirties. During this period, which he calls \"youth,\" but which we would call young adulthood, our life thrust is to establish ourselves. Emotions and drives run high - to satisfy our sexuality, to become successful. We are self-absorbed, obsessed with personal achievement, because we must carve out our niche in the world.
According to Jung, midlife (about 35 to 40) is a turning point. We now are settled. We know the shape of our capacities, the contours of what we can do. We either are successful or are beginning to make peace with the idea of not setting the universe aflame. We can stop being absorbed with self-advancement and start advancing as human beings. If things go right, there is a transformation in our personality. We become more mellow and introspective, less concerned with our status and ourselves. We become mature human beings.
Negotiating this transition is hazardous. We are doomed to be unhappy if we \"carry the psychology of the youthful phase\" into middle and later life. If we remain immersed in narcissism, continuing to lust after applause, we will grow bitter and rigid when the clapping inevitably dies down as the years advance. According to Jung, \"We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life\'s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little in the evening; and what in the morning was true in the evening will become a lie.\" A great beauty of twenty can be arresting at sixty too, but only by changing her focus, from her outer to her inner self.
Jung believed that making this change completes us as human beings. Our personality is balanced. We can accept and express every facet of who we are. One aspect of this fuller expression is a loosening of the rigid sex roles that are so sharply defined when we are young. As women get older they are freer about expressing the assertive, \"masculine\" side of their personalities. Men are more comfortable being sensitive and nurturing, aspects of their inner selves they earlier would have denied and shunned.
*38/159/5*
GENERAL HEALTH
|
