Transience during midlife as an adult psychic organizer: the midlife transition and crisis continuum

The intent of this paper is to add to the psychoanalytic understanding of midlife by exploring the relationships among transience, uncertainty and time limitation; and their effect on intra-psychic conflict and change. After a presentation of definitions and relevant midlife development tasks, the focus shifts to a discussion of two of Freud's papers, "On Transience" (1916 [1915]) and "The Uncanny" (1919) in which Freud introduced important concepts that provide a foundation for psychoanalytic exploration of attitudes toward transience, uncertainty and death. A major focus of the paper is a conceptualization of a developmental continuum from midlife transition to midlife crisis, rather than dichotomizing the midlife developmental process as either transition or crisis, followed by a discussion of three basic ways of processing the continuum and six common ways in which midlife pathology and/or more normative developmental progression are expressed. Two detailed, clinical examples illustrate the theoretical concepts and focus, in particular on clinical presentation and transference and counter-transference. The intention is to link theory with clinical understanding and technique.