Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Jung: Analytical
Psychology
(^128) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
Middle Life
Jung believed that middle life begins at approximately age 35 or 40, by which time
the sun has passed its zenith and begins its downward descent. Although this decline
can present middle-aged people with increasing anxieties, middle life is also a pe-
riod of tremendous potential.
If middle-aged people retain the social and moral values of their early life, they
become rigid and fanatical in trying to hold on to their physical attractiveness and
agility. Finding their ideals shifting, they may fight desperately to maintain their
youthful appearance and lifestyle. Most of us, wrote Jung (1931/1960a), are unpre-
pared to “take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with
the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto.... We can-
not live in the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning; for
what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was
true will at evening have become a lie” (p. 399).
How can middle life be lived to its fullest? People who have lived youth by nei-
ther childish nor middle-aged values are well prepared to advance to middle life and
to live fully during that stage. They are capable of giving up the extraverted goals of
youth and moving in the introverted direction of expanded consciousness. Their psy-
chological health is not enhanced by success in business, prestige in society, or sat-
isfaction with family life. They must look forward to the future with hope and an-
ticipation, surrender the lifestyle of youth, and discover new meaning in middle life.
This step often, but not always, involves a mature religious orientation, especially a
belief in some sort of life after death (Jung, 1931/1960a).
Old Age
As the evening of life approaches, people experience a diminution of consciousness
just as the light and warmth of the sun diminish at dusk. If people fear life during the
early years, then they will almost certainly fear death during the later ones. Fear of
death is often taken as normal, but Jung believed that death is the goal of life and
that life can be fulfilling only when death is seen in this light. In 1934, during his
60th year, Jung wrote:
Ordinarily we cling to our past and remain stuck in the illusion of youthfulness.
Being old is highly unpopular. Nobody seems to consider that not being able to
grow old is just as absurd as not being able to outgrow child’s-size shoes. A still
infantile man of thirty is surely to be deplored, but a youthful septuagenarian—
isn’t that delightful? And yet both are perverse, lacking in style, psychological
monstrosities. A young man who does not fight and conquer has missed the best
part of his youth, and an old man who does not know how to listen to the secrets
of the brooks, as they tumble down from the peaks to the valleys, makes no sense;
he is a spiritual mummy who is nothing but a rigid relic of the past. (Jung,
1934/1960, p. 407)
Most of Jung’s patients were middle aged or older, and many of them suffered
from a backward orientation, clinging desperately to goals and lifestyles of the past
and going through the motions of life aimlessly. Jung treated these people by help-
ing them establish new goals and find meaning in living by first finding meaning in
death. He accomplished this treatment through dream interpretation, because the
dreams of elderly people are often filled with symbols of rebirth, such as long jour-
122 Part II Psychodynamic Theories