An Old Neurosis in an Old Neurotic: “I shouldn't have played with it”

Although dangerously near 50 himself, and just beginning to approach his most creative period, Freud (1905b) once offered the puzzling opinion that anyone over the age of 50 was unsuitable for psychoanalytic intervention. The developmental narrative was too lengthy for efficient comprehension. The older patient lacked the mental elasticity needed for this type of self-observation. The defenses were encrusted. The libido was both stuck and waning. In sum, Freud felt it was better to devote the limited resources of psychoanalysis to patients who might be capable of change. Abraham (1919), acting the Oedipal upstart to an authoritarian Laius, amended Freud’s pessimism, noting that it was the age of the neurosis, not the age of the neurotic, that counted. Cases of relatively late onset psychopathology in the elderly were as amenable to psychoanalytic scrutiny and intervention as were comparable youthful cases. An old neurotic with a relatively more acute neurosis could learn new tricks.