Midlife Crisis

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that Sophia Coppola's Oscar-winning film 'Lost in Translation' (2003) features themes of life stages and transitions that have been popular in mainly American psychological theory of the post-World War II decades. The writer then discusses the film as it relates to themes of mid-life adjustment and crisis. The writer also notes that Daniel J. Levinson's orientation towards life expectations was modernist, post-World War II and American, too and looks at midlife difficulties and new orientations according to Daniel J. Levinson.
The writer maintains that stage or transition theories in psychology have been brought into question, beyond matters of differences in men and women. The writer further points out that what is known popularly as a midlife crisis is seen as an event of predictable modernist life expectations that have given way of postmodern alterations.

Outline:
Introduction
Daniel J. Levinson and Adult Development
"Lost in Translation" and Transitions
Concluding Note

From the Paper:

"The idea of midlife difficulties and new orientations was certainly popular among sophisticated urbanites of North America or Western Europe by the early 1960s, as in Elliot Jaques article, stressing the necessary production of a 'new' person at midlife through proper processing of where one had been and new realities. As stage theorists of the same day tended to insist, human development meant getting through stage achievements, the adjustment not made successfully, then experiencing unwanted symptoms of decline in despondency, chronic unhappiness, alcoholism or isolation. More recently, there seems a sort of theoretical compromise. For example, Heckhausen's discussion of physiological changes and life events at midlife refers to a set of adjustments that North Americans have now long been expected to encounter, in process models that indicate eventual adjustment and considerable 'resilience', a term seen to replace 1980s and 1990s ideas of human vulnerability. Levinson's generation stressed the midlife crisis as something that might be most difficult, radical and life transforming, many individuals not prepared for its arrival. One now sees a more tentative approach as in Heckhausen's article on expecting an eventual adjustment of some kind that will be managed by the individual, a stronger notion of the person who is aware of what he or she negotiates perhaps without significant emotional suffering or upheaval."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Coppola, S. (2003) Dir. Lost in Translation, 113 mins., US.
• Dacey, J.S. (1982). Adult Development. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman.
• Gersick, K.E. and P.M. Newton. (1996). Obituary - Daniel J. Levinson, 1920-1994. American Psychologist, 51, 262-263.
• Heckhausen, J. (2001). Adaptation and Resilience in Midlife, in M.E. Lachman. Ed. Handbook of Midlife Development. New York: Wiley, 345-394.
• Jaques, E. (1965). Death and the Mid-Life Crisis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 46, 502-514.

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• Term Paper # 121858 : "Human Growth at Midlife"

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