Each decade of life brings us new fears and anxieties, but in this age of “mixing of ages” we can feel old – or young – depending on attitudes and circumstances.
It is not only insecure neurotics who tend to cling to youth. Our worries about age are nourished by society itself with its attitudes towards selfishness, individualism and pragmatism. In the mass consciousness, old age is associated with uselessness and loss of vital functions. That is why it is so scary to stop being liked by others, to lose efficiency, and hence a place in society, to be forced out of the labor market, that is, symbolically condemned to extinction while still alive.
And although it is impossible to return youth, we involuntarily try to appear younger. If not to please yourself, then at least to remain attractive to others for as long as possible, to arouse their interest.
Today, the subjective feeling of old age overtakes us at about the age of 68 years. True, we cannot always explain it. “In past centuries, the criteria for determining age groups were objective: the ability to work or fight for men, the ability to bear children for women,” explains Jérôme Pellissier, a researcher in the psychology of aging.
There is nothing like this in our age of mixing ages. Childhood is being replaced earlier and earlier by adolescence. Psychoanalysts note that the latent phase of development, when impulses are dormant, which previously lasted from 7 to 11-12 years old, is now often replaced by premature prepuberty. In the region of 30 years, we get our first status position. At the same time, from the point of view of the employer, 45 is no longer a very attractive age. Younger employees show us our limitations and “nudge us out.” In fact, we do not have time to take a breath. We have just gained experience, practical knowledge, how we are offered to think about retirement.
Today they talk about the “third age” – the time between retirement and entering the “passport” old age at 75
“Thanks to the progress of medicine, the average life expectancy in Europe is 80 years for both sexes. Therefore, socially, we age earlier and biologically later,” reminds Jérôme Pellissier. This discrepancy between the real and the symbolic gives rise to a complex psychological collision: the fear of old age begins to disturb us before our body feels age-related changes. And this fear is often worse than old age itself.
But not everything is so simple, recalls psychotherapist Viktor Kagan: “Today they are talking about the “third age” – the time between retirement and entering the “passport” old age at 75 years old. Half a century ago, it was impossible to imagine a 70-80-year-old student or his peers traveling the world, discovering poets, artists, and so on. Social life is not only work. And the social activity of those who have entered the “third age” is amazing and cannot but rejoice.”
Summing-up
On average, by the age of thirty, women acutely feel that the biological clock is ticking and it’s time to start a family, have children. The fortieth birthday often becomes a midlife crisis: men and women sum up the preliminary results, reflect on the decisions made, what should be done to bring the intended goals closer, painfully search for meaning.
The fear of death does not top the list of worries at all: seeing how the horizon of possibilities narrows, we are afraid of not fulfilling ourselves in the second half of life.
After forty-five, the body begins to change, and for women, this is the time of the onset of menopause, when the chance for motherhood disappears.
This is the objective reality: very old people are treated the same way as small children.
Until recently, a fifty-year-old woman did not ask questions about her place in this world: having raised children, she joined a respected clan of matrons. But today’s fifty-year-olds feel young for the first time in their lives, because they have finally learned to enjoy life.
At sixty, we are still in shape, but we begin to think about old age with its companions – aging of the body, diseases. Moreover, we are well aware of this time on the example of our parents.
There is a fear of dependence – to be helpless, to be in the care of other people, perhaps completely strangers – doctors, nurses. It is also acutely felt because we already experienced these feelings in infancy, when we could exist only thanks to the care of others. But such is the objective reality: deep old people are treated the same way as small children.
Old age is a surreal state
We all age at different ages. Psychoanalysts believe that this is determined by our libido. When this psychic energy ceases to circulate, we withdraw into ourselves, asking ourselves: why should we love, desire? We consider ourselves unworthy of interest. And to everything new, to the opportunity to learn something, we answer: “This is not for me.” Words that mean we’ve grown old.
Love turmoil, loss, death of loved ones immediately add many years to us. “We can say that old age comes when we ourselves sentence ourselves to it and devote the rest of the time to the execution of this sentence,” Viktor Kagan comments. On the contrary, new relationships, new interests, new loves that evoke strong emotions support our “narcissism” and restore self-confidence.
Our imaginations, our dreams, know nothing of the passage of time. They are omnipotent, they have no boundaries
Behind the readiness for isolation and exclusion from society often lie problems with self-esteem and depression. “We can be old not only at any age, but we can do it repeatedly,” says psychoanalyst Judith Dupont. “The first time I got old was after my tenth birthday, the next morning when I woke up. I suddenly realized that now, up to 99 years old, my age will be expressed in double digits. I knew a beautiful and young-looking woman who passed right after her fortieth birthday; she had the feeling that now her life was over. In a certain sense, old age seems to me a surreal state: we are exactly the same as always, we carry the child, the adolescent, the adult that we were, even the baby and perhaps the fetus, and yet everything is different now. .
And there is a reason for this: our imagination, our dreams, know nothing about the passage of time. They are omnipotent, they have no boundaries. Reality and our body bring us down from heaven to earth. However, although they always have the last word, they cannot overcome the desire to live. At the end of his life, even when jaw cancer no longer let him go for a minute, Sigmund Freud wrote: “Life at my age is not easy, but spring is amazing, like love.”