ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts usually have only a few, if any, older patients in their practices during the span of their working lives, so it is important to share the experiences, to compare what can be achieved, and to speculate on the reasons for these achievements. It is also important to consider any hazards and to delineate the limitations of psychoanalysis as applied to older patients. Many people feel that at middle age they get a second chance to evaluate themselves before facing retirement, old age, and death, and they look to psychoanalysis to help them in this process. With the analysis of infantile anxieties and the diminution of the power of archaic parental images, these patients become able to assimilate new object representations into their psychic structure, thus facilitating ego-growth, the development of new sublimations, and the modification of their ego-ideal and therefore of their own self-image.
