Mid-life crisis
Encyclopedia
Midlife crisis is a term coined in 1965 by Elliott Jaques
and used in Western societies
to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the "middle years" or middle age
of life, as a result of sensing the passing of their own youth and the imminence of their old age. Sometimes, a crisis can be triggered by transitions experienced in these years, such as extramarital affairs, andropause
or menopause
, the death of parents or other causes of grief
, unemployment or underemployment, realizing that a job or career is hated but not knowing how else to earn an equivalent living, or children leaving home
. The result may be a desire to make significant changes in core aspects of day-to-day life or situation, such as in career, work-life balance
, marriage, romantic relationships, large expenditures, or physical appearance.
Academic research since the 1980s rejects the notion of midlife crisis as a phase that most adults go through. In one study, fewer than 10% of people in the United States had psychological crises due to their age or aging. Personality type and a history of psychological crisis are believed to predispose some people to this "traditional" midlife crisis. People going through this suffer a variety of symptoms and exhibit a disparate range of behaviors.
Many middle aged adults experience major life events that can cause a period of psychological stress or depression, such as the death of a loved one, or a career setback. However, those events could have happened earlier or later in life, making them a "crisis," but not necessarily a midlife one. In the same study, 15% of middle-aged adults experienced this type of midlife turmoil.
Some studies indicate that some cultures may be more sensitive to this phenomenon than others, one study found that there is little evidence that people undergo midlife crises in Japanese and Indian cultures, raising the question of whether a midlife crisis is mainly a cultural construct. The authors hypothesized that the "culture of youth" in Western societies accounts for the popularity of the midlife crisis concept there.
Researchers have found that midlife is often a time for reflection and reassessment, but this is not always accompanied by the psychological upheaval popularly associated with "midlife crisis."
A midlife crisis could be caused by aging itself, or aging in combination with changes, problems, or regrets over:
Midlife crises seem to affect men and women differently. Researchers have proposed that the triggers for midlife crisis differ between men and women, with male midlife crisis more likely to be caused by work issues.
Some have hypothesized that another cause of the male midlife crisis is the imminent menopause
of the female partner and end of her reproductive career.
They exhibit some of these behaviors:
, who thought that during middle age everyone’s thoughts were driven by the fear of impending death. Although midlife crisis has lately received more attention in popular culture
than serious research, there are some theoretical constructs supporting the notion. Jungian theory holds that midlife is key to individuation
, a process of self-actualization and self-awareness
that contains many potential paradoxes. Although Carl Jung
did not describe midlife crisis per se, the midlife integration of thinking, sensation, feeling, and intuition that he describes could, it seems, lead to confusion about one's life to date and one's goals.
Erik Erikson
held that in life's seventh stage, middle adulthood, people struggle to find new meaning and purpose to their lives; their questioning, he believed, could lead to what we now call a midlife crisis.
Some psychologists believe men's midlife crisis is a psychological reaction to the imminent menopause and end of reproductive career of their spouses. Their genes may be influencing men to be more attracted to reproductive women, and less attached to their non-reproductive spouses.
The balance (15% of those surveyed) had experienced major life experiences or transitions such as divorce or loss of a job in middle age and described them as "midlife crisis." While there is no doubt these events can be traumatic—the associated grief reactions can be indistinguishable from depression
-- these upheavals aren't unique to middle age and aren't an age-related midlife crisis.
University of California - Davis researchers Carolyn Alwin and Michael Levenson presented the current view of midlife crisis in a 2001 article:
Wrapping up their review of men's midlife crisis, Alwin and Levenson wrote that "... Given the bulk of the data, it is likely that, for most men, midlife is a time of achievement and satisfaction. For a certain proportion of men, however, the passage is not at all smooth." They found a similar pattern when they reviewed research on what are commonly thought to be triggers for women's midlife crisis: menopause, children leaving home, the "sandwich" of caring for both parents and children. Most women navigated those periods without a traumatic psychological "crisis."
The enduring popularity of the midlife crisis concept may be explained by another finding by Robinson et al. As Alwin and Levenson summarize: "... younger men, now middle-aged Baby Boomers, used the term "midlife crisis" to describe nearly any setback, either in their career or family life."
Levinson's findings were research about the possible existence of a midlife crisis and its implications. Whereas Levinson (1978) found that 80% of middle-aged participants had a crisis, and Ciernia (1985) reported that 70% of men in midlife said they had a crisis (Shek, 1996) others could not replicate those findings including Shek (1996), Kruger (1994), McCrae and Costa (1990), and Whitbourne (2010). The debate of whether or not there is a midlife crisis is being answered through recent research that attempts to balance such factors as response bias and experimenter effects in order to establish internal validity. The above mentioned research does not support Levinson's model of a single age in the middle years that is a designated time of transition and potential "crisis." Instead, changes in personality can occur throughout the adult years with no peak in general distress or psychosocial crisis (Whitbourne, Sneed, and Sayer, 2009).
For the most part, at all ages researchers in Positive Adult Development
have found improvement or at worst, stasis for most of the population.
meaning "The 40-Year-Old" was entirely geared towards covering midlife crisis issues in a comedy series. In the Australian television series, Neighbours
, Karl Kennedy
went though a midlife crisis dating young women and changing his appearance.
While the classic 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch
deals with the supposed decline of marital quality after seven years of marriage, the protagonist Richard Sherman (played by Tom Ewell
) is obviously going through a midlife crisis. In fact, the book that proposes the seven-year-itch hypothesis, entitled "Of Man and the Unconscious", even has a chapter on "The Repressed Urge in the Middle-Aged Male: Its Roots and lts Consequences" connecting it to the midlife crisis in men. As an editor for a publishing house, Sherman reads – and reads into – this psychological study which he believes directly corresponds to increasingly erotic, frenetic, and ultimately frantic daydreams stemming from his flirtation with the new nubile neighbor upstairs (Marilyn Monroe
in one of her most memorable roles).
Decidedly more serious takes on the subject include John Cheever's short stories, "The Country Husband" and "The Swimmer
", shedding light on modern '60s era suburbia, as well as more bittersweet and timely turns at the turn of the millennium in the films American Beauty
(2000 Academy Awards Best Picture winner) and Lost in Translation
.
English progressive rocker, Roger Waters
, formerly of Pink Floyd
, also released a solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking, which explores a man and his midlife crisis as he dreams of having an affair and tries desperately to find solutions to his problems. Similarly, The Kinks
' songs, "Shangri-La" and "Clichés of the World (B Movie)
", also appear to describe someone going through a midlife crisis.
Elliott Jaques
Elliott Jaques was a Canadian psychoanalyst and organizational psychologist. He developed the notion of requisite organization from his 'stratified systems theory', running counter to many others in the field of organizational development...
and used in Western societies
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the "middle years" or middle age
Middle age
Middle age is the period of age beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings....
of life, as a result of sensing the passing of their own youth and the imminence of their old age. Sometimes, a crisis can be triggered by transitions experienced in these years, such as extramarital affairs, andropause
Andropause
Andropause or male menopause, sometimes colloquially called "man-opause" is a name that has been given to a menopause-like condition in aging men...
or menopause
Menopause
Menopause is a term used to describe the permanent cessation of the primary functions of the human ovaries: the ripening and release of ova and the release of hormones that cause both the creation of the uterine lining and the subsequent shedding of the uterine lining...
, the death of parents or other causes of grief
Grief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
, unemployment or underemployment, realizing that a job or career is hated but not knowing how else to earn an equivalent living, or children leaving home
Empty nest syndrome
Empty nest syndrome is a general feeling of loneliness that parents or guardians may feel when one or more of their children leave home; it is more common in women...
. The result may be a desire to make significant changes in core aspects of day-to-day life or situation, such as in career, work-life balance
Work-life balance
Work–life balance is a broad concept including proper prioritizing between "work" on the one hand and "life" on the other. Related, though broader, terms include "lifestyle balance" and "life balance".-History:The work-leisure dichotomy was invented in the mid 1800s...
, marriage, romantic relationships, large expenditures, or physical appearance.
Academic research since the 1980s rejects the notion of midlife crisis as a phase that most adults go through. In one study, fewer than 10% of people in the United States had psychological crises due to their age or aging. Personality type and a history of psychological crisis are believed to predispose some people to this "traditional" midlife crisis. People going through this suffer a variety of symptoms and exhibit a disparate range of behaviors.
Many middle aged adults experience major life events that can cause a period of psychological stress or depression, such as the death of a loved one, or a career setback. However, those events could have happened earlier or later in life, making them a "crisis," but not necessarily a midlife one. In the same study, 15% of middle-aged adults experienced this type of midlife turmoil.
Some studies indicate that some cultures may be more sensitive to this phenomenon than others, one study found that there is little evidence that people undergo midlife crises in Japanese and Indian cultures, raising the question of whether a midlife crisis is mainly a cultural construct. The authors hypothesized that the "culture of youth" in Western societies accounts for the popularity of the midlife crisis concept there.
Researchers have found that midlife is often a time for reflection and reassessment, but this is not always accompanied by the psychological upheaval popularly associated with "midlife crisis."
Occurrence
For the approximately 10% of middle aged adults who go through an age-related midlife crisis, the condition is most common ranging from the ages of 40-60 (a large study in the 1990s found that the average age at onset of a self-described midlife crisis was 46). Midlife crises last about 3–10 years in men and 2–5 years in women.A midlife crisis could be caused by aging itself, or aging in combination with changes, problems, or regrets over:
- work or careerCareerCareer is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's "course or progress through life ". It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work ....
(or lack thereof) - spousal relationships (or lack thereof)
- maturation of children (or lack thereof)
- aging or death of parents
- physical changes associated with aging
Midlife crises seem to affect men and women differently. Researchers have proposed that the triggers for midlife crisis differ between men and women, with male midlife crisis more likely to be caused by work issues.
Some have hypothesized that another cause of the male midlife crisis is the imminent menopause
Menopause
Menopause is a term used to describe the permanent cessation of the primary functions of the human ovaries: the ripening and release of ova and the release of hormones that cause both the creation of the uterine lining and the subsequent shedding of the uterine lining...
of the female partner and end of her reproductive career.
Characteristics
Individuals experiencing a midlife crisis have some of these feelings:- search of an undefined dream or goal
- a deep sense of remorse for goals not accomplished
- a fear of humiliation among more successful colleagues
- desire to achieve a feeling of youthfulness
- need to spend more time alone or with certain peers
They exhibit some of these behaviors:
- abuseSubstance abuseA substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
of alcohol - acquisition of unusual or expensive items such as motorbikes, boats, clothing, sports cars, jewelry, gadgets, tattoos, piercings, etc.
- depressionDepression (mood)Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
- blaming themselves for their failures
- paying special attention to physical appearance such as covering baldness, wearing youthful designer clothes, etc.
- entering relationships with younger people (either/or sexual, professional, parentalEmpty nest syndromeEmpty nest syndrome is a general feeling of loneliness that parents or guardians may feel when one or more of their children leave home; it is more common in women...
, etc.) - placing overimportance (and possibly a psychologically damaging amount) on their children to excel in areas such as sports, arts, or academics
Theoretical basis
The notion of the midlife crisis began with followers of Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, who thought that during middle age everyone’s thoughts were driven by the fear of impending death. Although midlife crisis has lately received more attention in popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
than serious research, there are some theoretical constructs supporting the notion. Jungian theory holds that midlife is key to individuation
Individuation
Individuation is a concept which appears in numerous fields and may be encountered in work by Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, David Bohm, and Manuel De Landa...
, a process of self-actualization and self-awareness
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals...
that contains many potential paradoxes. Although Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
did not describe midlife crisis per se, the midlife integration of thinking, sensation, feeling, and intuition that he describes could, it seems, lead to confusion about one's life to date and one's goals.
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...
held that in life's seventh stage, middle adulthood, people struggle to find new meaning and purpose to their lives; their questioning, he believed, could lead to what we now call a midlife crisis.
Some psychologists believe men's midlife crisis is a psychological reaction to the imminent menopause and end of reproductive career of their spouses. Their genes may be influencing men to be more attracted to reproductive women, and less attached to their non-reproductive spouses.
Criticism
Some people have challenged the existence of midlife crises altogether. One study found that 23% of participants had what they called a "midlife crisis," but in digging deeper, only one-third of those—8% of the total—said the crisis was associated with realizations about aging.The balance (15% of those surveyed) had experienced major life experiences or transitions such as divorce or loss of a job in middle age and described them as "midlife crisis." While there is no doubt these events can be traumatic—the associated grief reactions can be indistinguishable from depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
-- these upheavals aren't unique to middle age and aren't an age-related midlife crisis.
University of California - Davis researchers Carolyn Alwin and Michael Levenson presented the current view of midlife crisis in a 2001 article:
Costa and McCrae (1980) found little evidence for an increase in neuroticism in midlife ... While they did find that some people were likely to experience such crises, ... these individuals were likely to experience crises in their 20s and 30s, and these experiences were not unique to midlife.
...Robinson, Rosenberg, and Farrell (1999) reinterviewed (500) men. Looking back over their midlife period, it became evident that while not necessarily entailing crisis, it was a time for re-evaluation."
Wrapping up their review of men's midlife crisis, Alwin and Levenson wrote that "... Given the bulk of the data, it is likely that, for most men, midlife is a time of achievement and satisfaction. For a certain proportion of men, however, the passage is not at all smooth." They found a similar pattern when they reviewed research on what are commonly thought to be triggers for women's midlife crisis: menopause, children leaving home, the "sandwich" of caring for both parents and children. Most women navigated those periods without a traumatic psychological "crisis."
The enduring popularity of the midlife crisis concept may be explained by another finding by Robinson et al. As Alwin and Levenson summarize: "... younger men, now middle-aged Baby Boomers, used the term "midlife crisis" to describe nearly any setback, either in their career or family life."
Levinson's findings were research about the possible existence of a midlife crisis and its implications. Whereas Levinson (1978) found that 80% of middle-aged participants had a crisis, and Ciernia (1985) reported that 70% of men in midlife said they had a crisis (Shek, 1996) others could not replicate those findings including Shek (1996), Kruger (1994), McCrae and Costa (1990), and Whitbourne (2010). The debate of whether or not there is a midlife crisis is being answered through recent research that attempts to balance such factors as response bias and experimenter effects in order to establish internal validity. The above mentioned research does not support Levinson's model of a single age in the middle years that is a designated time of transition and potential "crisis." Instead, changes in personality can occur throughout the adult years with no peak in general distress or psychosocial crisis (Whitbourne, Sneed, and Sayer, 2009).
For the most part, at all ages researchers in Positive Adult Development
Positive Adult Development
Positive Adult Development is one of the four major forms of adult developmental study that can be identified. The other three forms are directionless change, stasis, and decline...
have found improvement or at worst, stasis for most of the population.
In popular culture
The midlife crisis has been the subject of many television series and films, often the source of amusement in sitcoms, soaps and other television productions. The 1970s Polish television series, CzterdziestolatekCzterdziestolatek
Czterdziestolatek or 40-latek was a Polish television comedy series broadcast between 1974 and 1977. The first series enjoyed so much popularity that it has successfully continued and led to the release of a feature film I'm a Butterfly, a 40-year-old Love Affair and a New Year's Eve television...
meaning "The 40-Year-Old" was entirely geared towards covering midlife crisis issues in a comedy series. In the Australian television series, Neighbours
Neighbours
Neighbours is an Australian television soap opera first broadcast on the Seven Network on 18 March 1985. It was created by TV executive Reg Watson, who proposed the idea of making a show that focused on realistic stories and portrayed adults and teenagers who talk openly and solve their problems...
, Karl Kennedy
Karl Kennedy
Karl Raymond Kennedy is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Neighbours, played by Alan Fletcher. The character and his family were created by storyliners in an attempt to bring the show back to its roots. Karl made his first on-screen appearance on 20 September 1994 along with his...
went though a midlife crisis dating young women and changing his appearance.
While the classic 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch is a 1955 American film based on a three-act play with the same name by George Axelrod. The film was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, and starred Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, reprising his Broadway role...
deals with the supposed decline of marital quality after seven years of marriage, the protagonist Richard Sherman (played by Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell was an American actor.-Early life and career:Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, where his family expected him to follow in their footsteps as lawyers or whiskey and tobacco dealers....
) is obviously going through a midlife crisis. In fact, the book that proposes the seven-year-itch hypothesis, entitled "Of Man and the Unconscious", even has a chapter on "The Repressed Urge in the Middle-Aged Male: Its Roots and lts Consequences" connecting it to the midlife crisis in men. As an editor for a publishing house, Sherman reads – and reads into – this psychological study which he believes directly corresponds to increasingly erotic, frenetic, and ultimately frantic daydreams stemming from his flirtation with the new nubile neighbor upstairs (Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
in one of her most memorable roles).
Decidedly more serious takes on the subject include John Cheever's short stories, "The Country Husband" and "The Swimmer
The Swimmer
"The Swimmer" a short story by American author John Cheever, published in 1964 in the short story collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow. Originally conceived as a novel and pared down from over 150 pages of notes, it is probably Cheever's most famous and frequently anthologized story...
", shedding light on modern '60s era suburbia, as well as more bittersweet and timely turns at the turn of the millennium in the films American Beauty
American Beauty (film)
American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela...
(2000 Academy Awards Best Picture winner) and Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation (film)
Lost in Translation is a 2003 American film written and directed by Sofia Coppola; her second feature film after The Virgin Suicides and it stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson...
.
English progressive rocker, Roger Waters
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
, formerly of Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
, also released a solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking, which explores a man and his midlife crisis as he dreams of having an affair and tries desperately to find solutions to his problems. Similarly, The Kinks
The Kinks
The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray and Dave Davies in 1964. Categorised in the United States as a British Invasion band, The Kinks are recognised as one of the most important and influential rock acts of the era. Their music was influenced by a...
' songs, "Shangri-La" and "Clichés of the World (B Movie)
State of Confusion
State of Confusion is a 1983 album by the English rock group, The Kinks. The record featured the single "Come Dancing", which hit #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was one of the band's biggest hit singles in the United States, equaling the 1965 peak of "Tired of Waiting for You". The album itself...
", also appear to describe someone going through a midlife crisis.
See also
- Meaning of lifeMeaning of lifeThe meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", and "What is the meaning of it all?" It has...
- Quarter-life crisisQuarter-life crisisThe quarterlife crisis is a period of life following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the late teens to the early thirties, in which a person begins to feel doubtful about their own lives, brought on by the stress of becoming an adult...
- Empty nest syndromeEmpty nest syndromeEmpty nest syndrome is a general feeling of loneliness that parents or guardians may feel when one or more of their children leave home; it is more common in women...
- Understanding the Mid-Life Crisis