The following are notes I took at a lecture last week by Dr. Peter O’Connor, an Australian psychologist. Please note these are my responses/reflections on his lecture: don’t blame him for anything /everything!

His book: Facing the Fifties: from Denial to Reflection, Paperback, 228 pages, Published: December 2001, Allen & Unwin (Australia) Pty Ltd. ISBN: 1865083844

Basic idea: between youth and old age lies the unchartered territory of the 50s; a decade of often dramatic change. Dr O’Connor explores the experience of living through your 50s, offering interviews (mostly about 90 minutes each, and all unstructured) with men and women who share their sense of loss and confusion, as well as their hopes.

The fifties follow the mid-life crisis, when we collide with non-youthfulness. Whereas there are Rites of Passage for adolescents there are none for people in their Fifties. Pity.

Rites of Passage involve ‘S I R’ – Separation, Initiation, and Return. Basic to the SIR process is the experience of loss – the necessary prelude to all healthy change and renewal.

SEPARATION

Also behind all this is mythology (Jung understood that). In fairy tales love triumphs; in myths thanatopsis (preoccupation with death) triumphs.

In our 50s, our loss of youthfulness finally hits us (we see the reflection of our parents in the mirror).

We experience many other griefs too – maybe loss of a job (and with it loss of identity); for women menopause equals loss of child-bearing potential and a youthful-looking body. For men the popularity of viagra involves the promise of renewed virility.

Unresolved grief may lead to ‘obsessive pragmatism’ – we’re always busy.

INITIATION

Initiation happens to neophytes – and in the 50s we’re new in this territory. In the 50s we exist in an uncertain ‘liminal’ state – betwixt and between. We can be tempted towards ‘certitude’, looking for THE solution to everything (rather than living with a more mature ambiguity). We become preoccupied with facts, rather than patiently enduring ‘negative capability’. The wisdom of Jung is important: God is all that is not ego. The death of the ego can lead to the birth of the true ‘self’. This is our most important psychological task – and it involves a journey from projection (blaming parents or spouse or authority-figures for what we’ve become) to reflection. In the words of Jesus, we examine the log in our own eye rather than bothering with the splinters in others’. This is essentially the transformation of ‘knowledge’ to ‘wisdom’.

RETURN

Death is the ultimate return, the ultimate resolution. Ours is a linear rather than a circular existence, and waiting is an art to be learned here. (Women are better than men at waiting: they have to wait each month for their menstrual cycle, wait for the birth of their babies, wait for inevitable menopause, etc.

Interesting! I’m 65, but can relate to a lot of this!

Rowland Croucher

August 2003.