Customer Reviews

In Midlife: A Jungian Perspective (Seminar Series 15)

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Steven B. Herrmann, PhD, MFT
Author of "William Everson: The Shaman's Call"

This is one of my favorite books! In my late thirties, I carried In Midlife around with me in my briefcase. I would pull it out to read it over and over again. In Midlife signaled Stein's first seminal emergence as a writer. Here, he speaks of midlife's passage as: "a crossing-over from one psychological identity to another" (3), and having it at your arms reach can helped you understand what you or a friend or a family member or a client is going through during this tumultuous period. About the midlife state of affairs Stein writes: "The midlife crisis typically brings about the astonishing recognition of our own hidden-away madness. Midlife crisis turns persons inside out and tears up their crafted worlds" (1). In this "dark night of psychological crisis, when the light of day is eclipsed," he says "the figures of the psyche stand out and assume another magnitude. Dreams can strike like thunderbolts and leave you shaken to the core. It is in this night that Hermes comes forth and does his work. His myth speaks of the soul's awakening and emergence" (4). As an archetype of transformation, Hermes has much to do with awakenings, inventions, gifts, and grief. Stein writes: "When the soul awakens at midlife and presents its gifts, life is permanently marked by the inclusion of them. Taken in, they become the hallmark of your life, the core of your uniqueness. Refused, they can haunt your days and may undermine all your toiling" (5, 6). Following the passage at midlife, one has to move through a painful period of midlife "liminality," an anthropological term which "meaning `doorway' or `threshold'" (8). "In the state I am calling liminality," Stein writes "a person's sense of identity is hung in suspension. You are no longer fixed to particular mental images and contents of yourself or others... the prevailing feeling is one of alienation, marginality, drift" (8, 9). Transformation in midlife involves a "crucial shift from a persona-orientation to a Self-orientation" (27). "To do this thoroughly and decisively," Stein asserts "the person needs to `find the corpse' and then to bury it: to identify the source of pain and then to put the past to rest by grieving, mourning, and burying it" (27, 28). Finding and burying the corpse consists of a long process of letting go of ego defenses, fear of the unknown, and stubborn refusals to heed the call to wholeness. Yet, once the call to wholeness is surrendered to it brings with it a sense of renewed energy and a repudiation of the past. "This is where we stand and how we see when we are in liminality. Persona is mere persona, only a hollow mask full of lies and preposterous posturing, to be ridiculed and mocked, as the soul looks out from its position of submersion in the depths of liminal experience" (55, 56). Stein's writing on the midlife passage helped me immensely during the writing of my book on Walt Whitman, particularly the last passage I quoted. This is the experience Whitman describes precisely. Stein is a master at explaining psychological phenomena that apply to patients in analysis as well as to poets, artists, and creative writers. He has a way with words that rubs off on one. In the Jungian and post-Jungian literature he is certainly one of the best. This book is sure to speak to anyone interested in the psychological and mythic dimensions of the transformative journey of individuation as seen from the inside out.

I love that Stein recognizes and articulates that something strange is going on within us at midlife. He chooses Homer's "The Odyssey" to explore Odysseus' travails as one would a dream sequence. He sees Hermes as the god to help with the transition across this boundary (midlife). Midlife is not a little confounding and Stein presents the symptoms and some prescriptions using the mythical backdrop. Hermes (or Nature or God) is having a little fun with us, though from our vantage it does not feel so fun.

The frustrating thing about midlife is that it is unique to the individual and thus defies generic solutions. Stein paints with a broad brush that allows the reader to get out his or her own little brush and do his or her own work. Another example of such an effort can be found here: Midlife Themes: A Self Study

As midlife appears to be an unavoidable passage in all cultures of the world, (gratefully so), this compact book is packed with the insights midlifers need to reflect upon it with wisdom and patience. It is a keeper!