Analyst and patient at midlife

Increasingly it seems that analysts and their patients are in the midlife period. If analyst and patient are both going through a midlife crisis involving similar issues, this may have repercussions in the analysis. Turning to the literature for guidance reveals a paucity of papers concerning the clinical application of midlife developmental theory. This article explores such an application by describing the effect of two midlife changes-time urgency and role reversal with respect to aging parents-on the transference-countertransference in the analyses of two middle-aged patients.