The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife (Studies in Jungian Psychology By Jungian Analysts) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "When I was in fifth grade, just after World War Two, our teacher bought some glass prisms which had been intended for submarine periscopes..." (more)
Key Phrases: Middle Passage, Doll's House, Goethe's Faust (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Author James Hollis’s eloquent reading provides the listener with an accessible and yet profound understanding of a universal condition—or what is commonly referred to as the Mid-life crisis. The book shows how we may travel this Middle Passage consciously, thereby rendering our lives more meaningful and the second half of life immeasurably richer. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

About the Author

James Hollis, Ph.D. is a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst. He is the acclaimed author of seven other books in this series. He lives in Houston, Texas, where he is director of the C.G. Jung Educational Center. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Inner City Books (January 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0919123600
• ISBN-13: 978-0919123601
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #20,214 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #6 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Movements > Jungian
  #66 in	Books > Religion & Spirituality > New Age > Self-Help
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remember the pain is a symptom, and you must find the cause, June 12, 2004

By	C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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James Hollis had written a short but well thought out book on the midlife crisis. The term "mid-life crisis" would not be a term Hollis would use, because he sees the conflicts and disturbances that happen at mid-life as wonderful warnings that new directions are needed to achieve a meaningful life. He compares the depression, the loss of energy, the unexplained anger, the flare up of passion, as earthquake type pressures that give evidence of the rumblings below.

He compares the magic thinking of children, to the heroic thinking of young adulthood, to the more realistic thinking of the second adulthood. It is during this second adulthood that we must recognize what behavior patterns we bring from our early family of origin and whether those patterns have become maladaptive rather than adapative. He asks us to be aware of emotional outbursts or unrealistic passions of any type that signal that an unresoved complex still directs us emotionally and may be blocking our growth. He asks us to be willing to go into the luminous darkness within to seek answers, after all, by midlife you should have seen enough of the world to know that answers rarely lie outside of ourselves.

I enjoyed the poetry of Tennyson, Rilke, and Kazantzakis that he uses throughout the book. I especially liked the linkage to Tennyson's Ulysses, a poem that honors the fact that Ulysses' greatest adventures happen after mid-life.

Hollis believes the greatest tragedy during the midlife crisis is to remain unconscious and never examine the illusions, concepts, complexes, and dark shadows within us. After all, as we reach mid-life, this is the last chance for a meaningful life. The meaningful life is a higher goal that the happy life for both Jung and Hollis.

Hollis links his concepts to the ancient Greek dramatic concept of the tragic flaw. This flaw is usually unconscious and eventually brings the hero to ruin, at which point, his eyes are opened and he sees beyond the veil of illusion under which he has acted.

Hollis would say that the meaningful midlife is one in which ego needs are met and the ego becomes a tool, not an ever hungry brat requiring constant feeding. The wise adult uses the ego to achive a meaningful life, but does not have to achieve fame and fortune to feed this bottomless belly. The complexes are identified when unexplained or unwarranted anger and passion occur. After all these are just sign posts of an inner strategy failing to operate as it did back in childhood. The shadow has been accepted so that one's faults are put in perspective and do not weigh one down day after day with guilt and flashbacks and recriminations. This gives us the strength to go into the final years where one by one we lose all those whom we have loved and eventually they will lose us.

Jung asks "Are we related to something infinite or not?" and he defines life as a luminous spell between two dark mysteries. Coming through the mid-life crisis allows us to personally answer these thoughts and concepts.

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Quest for Personal Meaning, May 10, 2002

By	William Timothy Lukeman - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This short, superb book is one of the best works on midlife that I've ever read. Hollis is NOT offering simple answers or formulas; instead, he's making clear just how difficult but rewarding the Middle Passage (as he names it) can be. I especially appreciate his oft-repeated dictum that the goal of life isn't Happiness so much as it is Meaning. Isn't this perpetual struggle to find & grasp an elusive happiness precisely what gets so many of us tied up in knots? His insistence that we must be willing to go into our own dark places, that we must be willing to acknowledge & discard out illusions, is far better advice than most of the Self-Help industry offers ... and far more helpful. A book that provokes thought & reflection, this slim volume of inner treasure is highly recommended!

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to not be insane and bitter past 50, read this!, January 26, 2000

By	Darrell E. Berger (Jersey City, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the BEST book about getting safely to the other side of 50. If is NOT pop-psyche or New Age. It is solid Jungian psychology. It is written to and for an educated audience but is jargon free. His prose is very good. It is a short book and therefore one that actually can be read in a couple of sittings. It shows the process of how one develops survival mechanisms at an early age that become threadbare in adulthood, but are very hard to recognize and change without some honest reflection and hard work. But he makes an excellent case that failing to do the work leads to a deepening of the misery one often experiences at the onset of mid-life. Hollis tells the reader what must be done, and makes it seem exciting rather than painful.