ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the linkages between development and pathogenesis in later life, with particular reference to the inner changes that are set in train by the postparental transitions of late adulthood. It presents a model of late-onset pathology, along with biographical material from a great artist who was a clear casualty of later life transitions, and a prime exemplar of the model—the writer Ernest Hemingway. The contrasexual upheavals of the postparental period have brought about new constancies, in the form of new structures, new ego capacities for knowing and enjoying: psychological development has taken place. The wife then becomes the linchpin, the guarantor of the husband's delicate psychological balance. The wife may damage herself in a last-ditch attempt to preserve her husband in the psychological sense. Though the victims of late-onset disorders are generally located within a relatively narrow age band, they are widely dispersed across the entire social, economic, and ethnic spectrum.
