October 1965: 'Midlife crisis'

The term is coined by psychologist and social analyst Elliot Jaques in his paper "Death and the Mid-Life Crisis," published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

As summarized in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1967):

At age thirty-five the individual has reached the summit of life and sees a declining path before him with death at its end. This results in a crisis, stronger in some than others, connected with having to accept the reality of one's death. It is a period of anguish and depression at the anticipated loss of one's life and revives the infantile experience of loss of the good object (mother). Working through the infantile experience again increases one's confidence in being able to love and mourn what has been lost and increases the possibility of enjoying full maturity and old age. If creativity is present, it may take on new depths and shades of feeling. Dante's descent through Purgatory is essentially an expression of the mid-life crisis and its resolution.

* Complete text as reprinted in "Is It Too Late? Key Papers on Psychoanalysis and Ageing" (2006): @

* Entry from Encyclopedia.com (includes links to various summations): @

* Entry from Psychology Today: @

* "Middle Age Couples Are In Comfortable Rut" (Alison Goddard, Women's Medical News Service, 1970): @
* "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life" (Gail Sheehy, 1976): @; author's website: @
* "Men in Midlife Crisis" (Jim Conway, 1997): @
* "The Existential Necessity of Midlife Change" (Carlo Strenger and Arie Ruttenberg, Harvard Business Review, 2008): @

* "Midlife Crisis: A Myth or a Reality in Search of a New Name?" (Vivian Diller, Psychology Today, 2011): @
* "The Myth of the Midlife Crisis" (Anne Tergeson, Wall Street Journal, 2014): @
* "The Intellectual Odyssey of Elliot Jaques: From Alchemy To Science" (Douglas Kirsner, www.psychoanalysis-and-therapy-com): @

* Obituaries for Jaques, who died in 2003: @ (The New York Times) and @ (The Guardian)
* Midlife Club: @
* The World of Dante (University of Virginia): @
* Danteworlds (University of Texas at Austin): @

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