Is there a midlife crisis Essay

As a man approaches middle age a number of factors converge that tend to disrupt his previous modes of experiencing himself. For some men, this stress may culminate or be expressed in a â€Å"midlife crisis. † This crisis has been variously described as a pervasive sense of alienation from one’s own being in the world, unidentified or misunderstood feelings of anxiety or depression, and/or physical symptoms expressive of psychic distress. In an attempt to bring some order to conflicting reports about the experience of people entering middle age, we reviewed the existing literature. A lack of consensus soon became apparent. Some writers argued that a midlife crisis was a universal experience in male development; others suggested that men reached their peak of self-actualization at this point. Looking at the literature more closely, we saw that the research findings seemed to depend upon which methods were used and in which culture the middle-aged population was being studied. Psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and other writers working with clinical data often see a middle-age crisis as universal – a developmental inevitability. Levinson proposes, as did Jaques and others, a developmental sequence, with a period of midlife crisis, which â€Å"exists in all societies, throughout the human species, at the present stage of human evolution† (Sifford 1983). More recently, theorists like Slater, Laing, and Henry have focused on the alienating effects of socialization into a culture based on denial, distortion, and repression. Culture, that is, works to deny and distort what is most human in us. Regardless of whether we see midlife crisis as a consequence of social structure or culture, many theorists tell us that midlife crisis is widespread phenomenon. The impact of historical forces on the life course does not stop with one generation. Each generation encounters a set of historical circumstances that shape its subsequent life history and that generation transmits to the next one both the impact that historical events had on its life course and the resulting patterns of timing. Cultural norms governing the timeliness of life transitions (being â€Å"early,† â€Å"late,† or â€Å"on time†) and norms governing familial obligations also shape individual and collective family timing. In all these areas, historical and cultural differences are critical. Particularly significant is the convergence of socioeconomic and cultural forces. For example, â€Å"middle-age crisis† was a relatively recent invention in popular psychology in American society. It was attributed to middle-class women in particular in describing the problems connected to menopause and the â€Å"empty nest† in mid adulthood. â€Å"Middle-age crises† were not widespread, however. They were a product of stereotypes and a social construction rather than of sociobiological or familial realities. Since the 1970s, a considerable volume of feminist psychological literature has placed â€Å"middle-age crisis† in its proper perspective by exposing the cultural and â€Å"scientific† stereotypes that created the concept (Lawrence 1980). For the process to be fully working, then, we would expect to have evidence from lay accounts that the wider public had accepted and normalised the condition. Further evidence was provided by a Gallup poll survey in 1992 which found that over two-thirds of middle-aged men in the UK believed that there was some indefinable phenomenon called the ‘midlife crisis’. Furthermore, it stated that over half of the sample thought they had experienced a midlife crisis, or were actually having one, at some point between the ages of 40 and 60 (Neustatter 1996:80). Second, a further stage occurred in the United States when the midlife crisis started to appear as a legitimate condition in course material designed for the training of nurses. The psychologist Carl Jung believed that in Western cultures, the midlife crisis of males is rooted in a search for deeper spiritual roots (Marin 2001). From the perspective of male and female roles, there is often a reversal of roles away from the closed/traditional paradigm; that is, the husband moves inward to find strength for the future, and the female moves outward to the work world and career (Morris 1995). Thus midlife men experience the self-doubts, malaise, and concern over issues of a failure of adaptation. External economic changes in the opportunity structure affect changes in the timing of entry into the labour force, and, ultimately, retirement. Institutional and legislative changes, such as compulsory school attendance, child-labour laws, and mandatory retirement, shape the work-life transitions of different age groups and eventually influence their family life as well. People who suffer a midlife crisis in this form see the exciting experience of forward movement as ending with youth and the future as repetition and decay. Some people have midlife crises, but most do not. Crises do occur in midlife, but they are usually caused by a variety of factors, certainly not by chronology alone. We conclude that a more adequate theory of human development must take into account both the socio-historical environment, on the one hand, and internal psychological and biological processes on the other. References Lawrence, B. S. (1980). â€Å"The Myth of Midlife Crisis. † Sloan Management Review, 21(4): 35-49. Marin, Rick. (2001). â€Å"Is This the Face of a Midlife Crisis? † N. Y. TIMES, June 24, [section] 9. Morris, B. (1995). â€Å"Executive Women Confront Midlife Crisis. † Fortune (September 18): 60-86. Neustatter, A. (1996). Looking the Demon in the Eye: the challenge of midlife, London: Joseph. Sifford, D. (1983). â€Å"Midlife Crisis: The Nagging Pain of Unfulfilled Dreams,† Philadelphia Inquirer, October 17, p. 4.