ABSTRACT
The term ‘mid-life’, and particularly the idea of the so-called ‘mid-life crisis’ has entered the popular everyday currency of speech; not always used in its proper sense, but nevertheless testifying to the nature of people’s interest and concern with this important phase of human development. The two vast seminal contributions on this phase come from Eric Erikson (1968) and from Eliot Jaques (1970), both of whom delineated the features which are specific to this period of life in man and woman. Jaques’ essay Death and the mid-life crisis really set the style for an examination of the predicament of the human being in our culture, living longer than his or her forebears had any prospect of doing, and therefore facing a long slow passage from the height of adult achievement-of career, of partnership, of parenthood-to the decline into old age and towards death.
