ABSTRACT
During the last four decades there have been significant advances in psychoanalytic thinking and research, which have increased the understanding of developmental processes in the area of ego functions and object relations and of the affective implications of these for mental health. These advances have provided additions to the conceptual frame of reference, and this has encouraged some analysts to reconsider the possibility of analysing patients in older age groups. During the last twenty years, psychoanalysts in Boston, Chicago, and London, among others, have done pioneer work exploring the problems, limitations, and possibilities of treating the neurotic illnesses of elderly patients. This chapter considers some of the pressures that seem to operate as sources of anxiety and concern during the second half of the life cycle and leads some neurotic individuals to seek psychotherapeutic help when they either have managed without it up to that time, or their neurosis has been inadequately or partially helped at a younger age.
