ABSTRACT

In this chapter the author focuses on the analysis of a man who came to treatment at the age of 73M and whose analysis was terminated just before his seventy-fifth birthday. The man had suffered an acute psychotic breakdown when he was nearing the age of seventy-two. Following the usual psychiatric treatments, he settled down to a chronic psychotic state characterized by depression, hypochondria, paranoid delusions, and attacks of insane rage. Nearly two years after the beginning of his overt illness, when no improvement occurred, and when the psychiatrists in Rhodesia, where he lived, gave a hopeless prognosis, his son, who resided in London, brought him for psycho-analytical treatment. His treatment with him lasted eighteen months. In his analysis the author came to the conclusion that the unconscious fear of death, increasing with old age, had led to his psychotic breakdown. He believes that the same problem underlies many breakdowns in old age.