The Mid-Life Crisis: A Jungian/Personal Perspective

Artwork by Alex Grey

”The stroke of noon is a painful moment for all of us, as it carries with it intimations of mortality.” Anthony Stevens

About six-years ago I ran into the midlife crisis, that critical juncture in life that necessitates a confrontation with the whole of oneself — conscious and unconscious. I also experienced a larger number of lucid dreams than usual, which served to awaken me to what was going on; namely, the need for a much broader understanding of my psyche.

The midlife crisis is a complex affair and manifests itself on the surface of consciousness in many forms: divorce; career failure; loss of purpose; addictions, etc. And in regard to this process no-one is immune: the rich, the famous, the ordinary man and woman in the street, the beggar, the villain, and even the saint — all are subject to the challenge of radical change and transformation that midlife inevitably brings.

Few have gone further in the exploration of the human psyche than the late Carl Gustav Jung. Indeed, between the ages of thirty-nine to forty-five Jung, himself, suffered his own midlife crisis. And whilst eventually he was to emerge from it, greatly enriched with a new cartography of mind, he nonetheless kept a revolver in his desk drawer in case madness overtook him. Thankfully for many, Jung prevailed.

A lot of Jungian studies therefore involve a detailed examination of those psychological factors that typically precipitate the disruption of midlife. Our basic cultural tendency to pursue an all-encompassing goal, such as fame, fortune, mastery, etc., as well as unconsciously adopting an adherence to collective values and myths, are prime examples.

Cultural values and myths are, of course, normal features of life the world over. In our formative years these can serve as adaptive strategies — i.e. various means of securing a position in society for oneself, as well as the need to gain approval from family members, friends, etc. — but these mythic motives can carry us only so far. Limited to such structures, personality can become very one-sided, to the point of a decidedly unbalanced life — at least, till psyche wills it otherwise. It is when these projected promises and hopes fail to live up to expectations, and the means of our salvation collapses, that the substantive inner conflict of midlife occurs.

“A psychosocial persona becomes inscribed and taken on as a way of adapting to the specific demands of a given cultural environment. Later, however, usually around midlife, individuation demands that one separate from the collective qualities that have been identified with … ” Murray Stein

Conversely, in the effort to assert autonomy an individual can follow a wayward/rebellious path, otherwise known as the archetypal renegade. Unlike the previous examples of compliance with “conditioned normality”, such individuals reject society outright and exempt themselves of any responsibility to the collective. And here I am now describing myself. Certain aspects of my personality did, indeed, become narrowed and marginalised. Consequently, much of my potential fell into darkness (or “the shadow” to use Jung’s term) and is only now emerging into the light of a new dawn.

Accordingly, at midlife the energies and motives that had sustained me for so long began to dissipate; the future I imagined revealed itself as mere fantasy; certain attitudes, which for a time served me well, had outlived their usefulness and needed to die. Disaffection, despair, and defeat set in … life, it seemed, had failed me. Yet this was not the full story because beneath the maelstrom questions still remained to be addressed.

The analyst, James Hollis writes:

“In the second half of life, the questions become: ‘Who now, apart from the roles you play, are you? What does the soul ask of you? Do you have the wherewithal to shift course, deconstruct your painfully achieved identity, risking failure, marginalization and loss of collective approval?’.”

Aged forty at the time of my own crisis and faced with these rather important questions, I felt wholly unable to confront my difficulties. Besides certain social problems and financial constraints, i.e. no income, I held firm to an anti-authority mentality which had dominated my mindset from childhood through to adolescence and then into adulthood. My emotional freedom and sense of worth had been terrorised by the bondage of a severely abusive upbringing; so my adult virulence was largely an expression of a fragile and somewhat perverse autonomy.

Therefore, in order to preserve my individuality and protect it from the potential threat of unwanted intrusions, I had all-but rejected the “outside world”. And to ward off the pains and exigencies of growth, I immersed myself in a perpetual miasma of mind-altering substances. Moreover, beyond the reveries of drugs and the sixty-four squares of the chessboard — chess being virtually my sole companion at this time — there was nothing much in the world to interest me.

To boot, under the illusion that I could escape indefinitely into “the eternal game” (as chess is known) and absorb myself in an abundance of its literature, I lived in a delapitated flat with no furnishings. Granted, for a while the world of abstract thinking did indeed provide a certain contentment and comfort. Any commitments outside of “my private idaho” were simply too scary to contemplate, for they would require compromises I simply could not make.

I’d all-but exiled myself, and with very few exceptions my social connections did not extend beyond a local chess club. Even then, I only ever played chess there and discussed variations, the latest wrinkles in the openings, or whatever else was happening in the chess world; there were no real human connections to speak of. Furthermore, I had projected all my hopes and ambitions onto chess, imagining that if I could master it I would finally have mastered life itself! (It was only much later when I read Karen Horney’s ‘Neurosis In Human Growth’ that I recognised this projection as an illusion.)

My attitude of wanton rebellion, forged over a long period of time, is an instance of the one-sidedness mentioned previously. And though for a while it awarded much assurance in terms of stabilising my ego-identity, it contributed greatly to my crisis when I came to realise it could not serve the larger vocational purposes of my life.

One can go only so far down the same path with anything. And so it was no accident that during the onset of my crisis I had a dream involving a pitch battle about to take place between two rival forces. Just at the moment when they were about to collide, my mind urged me to choose a side, but instead I cowered behind a tree and tried to stay neutral. Then, without warning, both forces converged and turned upon me.

There is an eery passage in Jung which encapsulates this dream succinctly:

“The mind has a thousand ways to terminate a life that has become meaningless.”

This nightmare was a perfectly accurate reflection of both my attitudes and mindset as, evidently, they were then: caught in a self-involved malaise, I’d idled away the hours of my life for far too long and, lest the psyche’s more sinister powers destroy me, it was time I made some critical choices. (This may sound extreme, but too much experience with the ruinous aspects of my personality has convinced me otherwise.) In successive dreams that followed, policemen began to appear in a concerted effort to confiscate my drugs; and I was also repeatedly imprisoned.

The recurring images of prison also mirrored the state of my psyche. However, given my hostilities against any authoritative attempts to control me, my response was predictable: as if my rage against these circumstances would extricate me, I lashed out. And little did I realise at the time that the “real” prison was actually an accumulation of my own conceptions: all I had succeeded in doing was to incarcerate myself!

Fortunately, the unconscious side of my psyche had retained sufficient intelligence to alert me to the fact that I was the gaoler — a clear example of what Jung called “the wisdom of the dream”. It was only years later, and after much reflection however, that I understood the kind of illegitimate suffering that Jung warned against and to which I had been unconsciously subject: suffering, he contended, only becomes legitimate when its true source is made conscious and permitted to take its natural course.

Furthermore, only when I made a more indepth study of Jung’s psychology — in particular, the dynamics of the unconscious and the autonomous life of complexes — did I more closely recognise the destructive forces I had aligned myself with. I became aware of the larger pattern of my life and what had led to the catastrophe: the crisis was in consciousness itself, not “out there” as I was prone to assume in an effort to justify my shenanigans.

The tragedy and malice of my childhood had instilled an understandable aversion to the world, and as a consequence left much of my potential under-developed. And so, unable to assume much responsibility in life, I became delinquent. Indeed, I revelled in this persona, and in accord with my neoteny and lack of self-discipline, in 2008 I declined a university invitation. The idea of study, itself, held much appeal but I feared the responsibilities that came with it; I was ill-prepared to give up cannabis and find employment to support myself. Thus, the opportunity for growth on many fronts was abandoned in favour of sloth and indolence.

To meet the challenge of my midlife, a thorough exhumation of previous attitudes became imperative, a task which initially proved so arduous it could be likened to turning around a battleship with a wooden oar. Yet through bringing my dreams into consciousness and acting upon them, the path of individuation gradually opened up to me — after all, “To individuate, one must awaken!” (Stein).

For true individuation to occur — i.e. the finding of one’s own path — a period of alienation/separation from the collective becomes inevitable. (The act can be discerned, for instance, in the unfoldment of Jung’s own midlife crisis and the consequential development of his psychology.) Disaffected with the fictions of the world, for the reasons I have enunciated, I had drifted so far from it as to become the kind of isolated island that the poet, John Donne, wrote about in the seventeenth century.

Deep down I had always known that I could never be a character in somebody else’s novel, for some part of me has always insisted that I be the author of my own life. In this respect, the renegade in me was a primitive expression of a perfectly legitimate archetype. But now the onus was on me to reenter the world with a new psychological agenda and find a purpose conducive to both the interests of my community and the integrity of my soul.

Jung writes:

“Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individuant leaves behind him for the world, that is the guilt which he must endeavour to redeem. He must offer a ransom in place of himself, that is, he must bring forth values which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective personal sphere.”

Perhaps another of my dreams can help bring the principle of individuation into clearer focus? It concerns the “prison complex”, only on this occasion the outcome was as unexpected as it was revelatory: … Together with a number of other inmates, I sat in a holding cell, a structure designed to temporarily contain prisoners for the purposes of the judicial process. At this point, I saw a chance to free myself; and so I thanked my fellow cons for their support, bade them farewell and calmly exited.

Unlike similar dreams in which I attempted to smash my way out (to no avail), this time my mind was far more tranquil. No longer did I have to identify with the rebel/outcast/prisoner (at least not solely): I was finally free to go my own way. And it did not escape my attention that, in order to do so, a certain equanimity was demanded beforehand. Thus, the dream revealed that, provided I was willing to make peace with the demons of my past and embrace the gods of the present, The Great Work could now commence.

Artwork by Alex Grey

Six-years hence, I have made substantial progress. The generosity of my dearest friend enabled me to decorate and furnish my home. He is also a brilliant analyst, my closest figure to the father I never had, and I could not have travelled so far without him. Through him I have also been able to make clearer sense of my dreams and steadily develop a relationship with the unconscious.

It took four attempts over two years to quit tobacco, and not long after I managed to free myself from fifteen-years of cannabis addiction. In August, 2015, I became a member of Narcotics Anonymous and have regularly attended meetings since. Common to most addicts, I must admit to a number of relapses and certain resistances to the process of recovery, but perseverance has proven to be key. The fellowship has also given me a spiritual point of reference.

A new life in the gym has given me renewed vigour, a better physique, and more connectivity with the outside world; and I took up cycling. And I have used my expertise in chess to start teaching. Together with a few private pupils, I now run my own groups which meet regularly. Moreover, my practice has instilled in me a newly found sense of purpose.

I am enormously grateful to all the friends who continue to help me on my journey. I am also very thankful to Jung and his collaborators for their invaluable contribution to my understanding of the psyche.

Finally, I would like to end this article by sharing another dream, one that encouraged me to pursue my potential as a writer: … I came across a stately home, surrounded by ornate railings which lent an air of majesty. Not one but two lords of the manor stood at the main gates and, eager to know their thoughts about it, I gave them my autobiography. They politely obliged me, looked over the work together, and after some contemplation handed it back to me with joint approval!

Symbolically, the stately home represents nobility, i.e. the Self — that central psychological component that instigates individuation.

Suggested Reading:

Hillman. J ‘The Soul’s Code’

Hollis. J. ‘The Middle Passage: From Misery To Meaning In Middle-Life’

Horney. K. ‘Neurosis In Human Growth’

Jung. C. G. ‘The Undiscovered Self’

Stein. M. ‘Transformations: Emergence Of The Self’

Stevens. A. ‘The Psychology Of Carl Jung’