I think it was C. G. Jung who coined the term “Mid-Life Crisis”. In his system it went with his idea of psychological types. Jung developed a typology of personalities or psychological functions, which was based on four different styles. You may remember that Sensei Joshin Althouse gave us a talk recently about a Buddhist system which rests upon a typology of five different styles. Precise detail of the beginning and end of one style and how it differs from another style are not so much the critical point. The underlying idea is a useful one.
Jung reasoned that as we go through adolescence and enter into adult life, we have to develop a way of dealing with the difficulties, the conditionality of the world around us. We develop a style that works. Some people their style is more intellectual, some it’s more emotional, some are more oriented to “getting the job done”, some are more sociable, personable. There are different ways of getting on in the world.
Each of these involves developing some aspect of one’s natural talent. Because we’re basically slightly lazy sort of creatures, when we’ve found a way that works, we don’t much bother with the other faculties that we’re making less use of. If you can get by by being sociable, why work hard? If you can get by with good ideas, why develop your emotions? … and so on.
So, this means, that we often reach a stage in the middle of life, when we’ve been reasonably successful, we’ve made an adjustment to the social world, but large chunks of ourselves remain undeveloped. The very emotional person perhaps has not developed their intellectual faculty; the person who is very active, gets things done, may not have developed their social skills that well, … and so on.
And Jung felt that this meant that the - the way he put it was that the - undeveloped faculties had been pushed into the shadow. They had gone into the unconscious part of the personality.
However, as one reaches a certain age, one realizes and it starts to become more pressing, that life doesn’t go on forever, there is only a limited amount of time left. This being the case, the parts of the personality that have, as it were, stepped aside or given way in order to allow other parts of the personality to shine forth start to agitate. They start to say: “When’s our turn? When’s our chance coming?”
And so, often roundabout the midpoint of life, there is some sort of revolution in the personality. The shadow parts assert themselves, come to the fore, and suddenly things that seemed obvious before are no longer so. The personality changes, there is a turning around of some kind. This is all in an effort of the personality to reach its fullest development: the psyche to reach an all-rounded state, which Jung called Individuation, which Buddhists might call Completing the Mandala, or something of that kind.
So, midlife crisis, the time when the side of oneself that has remained relatively dormant comes to the fore and new things become possible, new constellations, new actions, new ways.
An interesting time! Sometimes the business man throws it all up and goes to Tahiti and starts painting pictures. Well, that’s the midlife crisis.
Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much
Dharmavidya
David
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