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Life begins at 40: the biological and cultural roots of the midlife crisis | The Royal Society — Transcript

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0:00thank you John for those very kind words
0:04it's an absolute pleasure to be here
0:07tonight it's an honor to be speaking at
0:10the Royal Society so thank you very much
0:13for inviting me I have to say that I had
0:16not expected so many people to be here
0:19so thank you very much for coming as
0:21well we know particularly at the Royal
0:27Society that in terms of knowledge
0:30production we always stand on the
0:33shoulders of giants there are always
0:34people who have gone before us but there
0:38are people who walk beside us on whom we
0:41depend as well and before I start I want
0:44to thank three institutions the first is
0:47the Wellcome Trust the Wellcome Trust
0:49has funded a large proportion of my
0:52research and my research career from the
0:55very early stages converting from a
0:57doctor into a an early career researcher
1:01throughout various larger program grant
1:03strategic awards and more recently the
1:06trust has supported the creation of the
1:08Welcome Center for cultures and
1:09environments of Health in many ways for
1:11me this was the fulfillment of a dream
1:14although at times the responsibilities
1:17and demands seemed more like a nightmare
1:19but it's a fantastic opportunity and I'm
1:22deeply grateful for the trust for the
1:23funding and it's nice that Simon Chaplin
1:25is here as well so thank you for coming
1:28I'm also a deeply fortunate that I have
1:32worked at the University of Exeter for
1:33over 20 years we know from the tag line
1:38the Dexter is probably the best
1:40university in the world
1:42and for me it has been fantastic a place
1:47to grow as an academic a place to
1:49develop to try out new ideas the senior
1:52management at the University Steve Smith
1:54the vice chancellor Janice Kay the
1:57Provost Nick told that before he left
1:58and now Neil gal that senior group
2:00leading the University have been
2:02fantastic they have supported and
2:04encouraged me and been prepared to take
2:07a risk or two to support one or two of
2:10my more grandiose ideas I also want to
2:14thank Andrew Thorp who is the Dean of
2:15the College of Humanities has been
2:16fantastic a scholar and friend for many
2:19many years
2:20the final institution but I want to
2:24thank is the institution that is my
2:26family I didn't get where I am today
2:31without my wife Siobhan
2:34wonderfully loyal faithful tolerant of
2:37my own crises throughout our marriage
2:39our three children Kiera rhythm and
2:42Connell the best children these together
2:45are the why and the how of my life so
2:49thank you it may seem strange to be
2:54standing in the Royal Society giving a
2:56lecture about a subject like the midlife
2:59crisis this is an institution renowned
3:01for its world leading scientific
3:03research but I hope that what I have to
3:05say will do justice to the three figures
3:08after whom this lecture is named John
3:10Wilkins of course a natural philosopher
3:12a polymath one of the founders of the
3:14society
3:15John Desmond Bernal an Irish scientist
3:18renowned for his work in x-ray
3:20crystallographer crystallography in
3:22molecular biology but also a very
3:24committed and prolific historian of
3:26science interested in the relationship
3:28between science and society Peter
3:30Medawar really most famous for his work
3:33on immunological tolerance for which he
3:36received the Nobel Prize in 1960 what is
3:39less well known about Medawar work he
3:42was also interested in aging aging as an
3:46unsolved biological problem as he put it
3:48in his inaugural lecture in 1951 and one
3:52of the terms that Medawar used
3:54to describe the aging process was
3:56senescence and that concept of
3:59senescence had been popularized by an
4:01American psychologist Grandville Stanley
4:03Hall in the early 20th century and it
4:05came to be one of the key ways in which
4:08midlife and middle-age was defined
4:11during the early 20th century middle-age
4:13came to represent the period between
4:15adolescence and senescence and that's
4:19why many people refer to it as middle
4:21essence middle-aged as middle essence so
4:24although it's a strange subject to be
4:26talking about at the Royal Society I
4:28hope that it will do justice to these
4:31three figures here after whom the
4:32lecture is named let me take you back
4:39and some of you will remember this let
4:42me take you back to the late 1970s so an
4:47iconic sitcom television series on BBC
4:51the fallen rise of Reginald Perrin
4:53starring Leonard Rossiter and the
4:56television series was based on a novel
4:58by the English comic writer David nobs
5:02Reggie Perrin Reginald Isle Anthony
5:04Perrin our IP was 46 years old married
5:09to his wife Elizabeth living in a near
5:12Georgian house in the Surrey suburbs
5:14they had two children both growing up
5:16leaving their parents living in a house
5:18that was perhaps not quite well no
5:21longer a home Reggie commuted every
5:24weekday up to Waterloo station walked
5:26across the bridge went to work at
5:28sunshine deserts as a middle manager as
5:31a bureaucrat and at the start of the
5:32novel Reggie is depressed
5:37he's disillusioned and distressed
5:39disaffected disillusioned with his life
5:42disillusioned with his wife
5:44disillusioned with his work and he
5:47begins to behave rather randomly he
5:50starts sending off aggressive memos to
5:53his colleagues he tries to have an
5:54affair with his secretary he begins to
5:57get more irascible and one day while his
6:00his wife is out he decides that he's
6:02going to collect all his childhood
6:03mementos the memories of his youth and
6:06burn them
6:08as if he's trying to eradicate his past
6:11eradicate his identity
6:15Reggie decides that he can no longer
6:18live like this he decides there's only
6:21two ways he can either disappear in some
6:23way or he can kill himself so he drives
6:27a van down to a Dorset Beach takes off
6:29his clothes leaves them on the beach and
6:31walks out into the sea naked he doesn't
6:34drown himself he walks back up puts
6:36another set of clothes on so that he
6:38leaves his old clothes on the beach so
6:40people think that he's drowned himself
6:41puts on a new set of clothes puts on a
6:43week and takes on a new identity and he
6:46becomes eventually Martin well born now
6:49I don't want to tell you for those of
6:51you I mean some of you will remember the
6:53television series the book is fantastic
6:56in many many ways it takes place only
6:58over a week or two I don't want to give
7:00away the ending what I want to say is
7:03that what Reggie Peron was suffering
7:05from at the age of forty something was
7:08what we would now call and was indeed
7:10called then a midlife crisis a man
7:13usually a man not exclusively and in
7:15this period largely understood to be a
7:18male problem a man between the age of
7:20about 35 and 45 in that deadline decade
7:23realizing that his life was going
7:25nowhere disaffected and disillusioned
7:27would go off the rails the midlife
7:30crisis now the term had been first
7:32introduced about a decade earlier by a
7:34Canadian social scientists and
7:36psychoanalyst Elliot Jax Jax had come
7:38over from Toronto in the second world
7:40war had stayed he was one of the
7:42founding members of the Tavistock
7:43Institute for human relations he was
7:46social scientists but also psychoanalyst
7:49he'd been analyzed himself by Melanie
7:51Klein and had a practice as a
7:53psychoanalyst and what she described was
7:57pretty much what Reggie parind
7:59experienced and his point in death in
8:02the midlife crisis a short article
8:03published in 1965 he pointed out that
8:06the paradox is that of entering the
8:11prime of life the stage of fulfillment
8:13but at the same time the prime and
8:15fulfillment are dated death lies beyond
8:18so the picture that Jack's created was
8:21off this
8:22this man usually at the peak of a
8:25binomial curve of life and when you get
8:27to that peak all you can see is the
8:30downward curve to death and that's the
8:32moment when anxiety a depressive crisis
8:36was triggered he then went on to explain
8:40what happened to middle-aged men or what
8:43kind of behavior they began to exhibit
8:45and what he said was that in order to
8:48cover up this crisis they developed a
8:52set of manic behaviors to try and
8:54convince themselves that they were still
8:56young so the compulsive attempts to
9:01remain young the hypochondriacal concern
9:03over health and appearance the emergence
9:04of sexual promiscuity in order to prove
9:07youth and potency the hollowness lack of
9:10genuine enjoyment of life these he said
9:12are familiar patterns and they are all
9:15attempts at a race against time
9:17so the midlife man the man in the
9:20deadline decade sees death accelerating
9:23towards him and he tries to deny that or
9:26cover it up by claiming or pretending
9:29that he's younger than he is leading to
9:31these kinds of behaviors at the time
9:36both in the 60s and when Reggie Peron
9:39was having his crisis in the 70s there
9:41were two principal explanations for the
9:44midlife crisis
9:46the first was psychological the kind of
9:50analysis an explanation that Eliot
9:52Jack's put forward and that is that the
9:54midlife crisis was an identity crisis a
9:58crisis a depressive identity crisis very
10:01similar to the adolescent crisis the
10:03adolescent crisis he thought was a
10:05schizoid crisis the midlife crisis a
10:08depressive crisis hey axe was not the
10:12only person or certainly not the first
10:14person to think about the stages the
10:17critical phases of life in this way Carl
10:19Jung in the 1930s had written about his
10:23own crisis at the age of 37 and
10:25particularly Eric Erickson an American
10:28developmental psychologist had talked
10:31about life particularly in terms of the
10:33ages or the stages of
10:35he described life in terms of eight
10:37stages each of which had its own
10:40particular conflict the stage that
10:44correlated with the period that Jax was
10:46talking about he thought was focused on
10:51a conflict between creativity on the one
10:53hand and stagnation on the other and it
10:56was that that created the crisis so
10:58there were others as well thinking
10:59largely from a psycho analytical point
11:02of view about how we understood
11:04middle-age and midlife one of the
11:07important points to make about this kind
11:10of approach to middle age and midlife
11:12was that it was not just theoretical
11:15this wasn't just a theory of how we
11:18developed eating it was also
11:20incorporated into practice and
11:22psychoanalytical models of Aging became
11:26absolutely key to the work of marriage
11:29guidance counselors for example working
11:31for the national marriage guidance
11:31council or couples therapist working at
11:35the Tavistock clinic for example most of
11:38that was built on an understanding of
11:40individual development across the life
11:42course through the stages through middle
11:45age and through the various crisis
11:47points that they could produce so the
11:52first explanation for regi parents
11:54crisis is that he was suffering from
11:56some identity crisis around the age of
11:59forty forty-five but there were another
12:02set of explanations and these were
12:05biological the first biological
12:10explanation really revolved around some
12:13of the work that Peter Medawar was
12:14interested in old age natural death from
12:16the unsolved problem of biology he was
12:19interested particularly in the
12:21evolutionary and biological dimensions
12:23of Aging and in in that sense the
12:26downward curve of life was not
12:27necessarily only an awareness of
12:30approaching death it was something else
12:32it was an awareness that as we get older
12:34we get grayer or Balder all we develop
12:38middle-age spread or our muscle mass
12:40declines our vigor our vitality
12:42deteriorates and it was that sense of
12:45deteriorating vigor that fueled the cry
12:48in some kind of waste now it's not
12:50unrelated to the fear of death that Jax
12:52described but very much linked to that
12:54declining biological vitality that
12:57people wanted there was of course
13:00another way and there has been another
13:02way in which midlife crises have been
13:05linked to biology and that is
13:06particularly in women in relation to
13:08reproductive life and here the argument
13:12was and most of the literature certainly
13:16in this period was on men but there was
13:17some literature on women in these cases
13:19women were understood to go through a
13:21crisis act through during after
13:25menopause as their reproductive
13:28functions supposedly disappeared or in
13:32some ways through the emptiness process
13:35so the a woman's midlife crisis which
13:37had tied very very clearly to her
13:39reproductive capacity the term
13:42biological clock or the talkee the clock
13:44is ticking in fact was used by an
13:46American journalist Richard Cohen in
13:481978 but the notion that in women their
13:52transitions and their crises might be
13:54governed by their biology or reduced to
13:56their biology was very commonplace the
13:59bats weren't surprised you to know that
14:02some men blamed their own midlife crises
14:05on the menopause their wife's menopause
14:08as well so let me go back to Reginald
14:13Perrin and reflect for a moment
14:15Reggie parry in the late 70s having a
14:17crisis trying to change his life in key
14:20ways recognizing that he perhaps hadn't
14:23achieved what he wanted and that he was
14:25disaffected and disillusioned we can see
14:28that pairing we could explain that in
14:31terms of his own psychological angst
14:33he's got to a stage an age in his life
14:35where everything looks as if it's going
14:38downhill and only death awaits we can
14:41also get a sense from his book that
14:43physically he's declining physically he
14:46no he no longer feels to be himself to
14:48be the man that he was so we could see
14:51it very much as an individual story of a
14:54man with psychological and biological
14:57problems what I want to suggest for the
15:01rest of the talk
15:02is that this is not the only way in
15:05which we can understand the midlife
15:07crisis in fact I want to zoom out to
15:09take it away from the individual and
15:11think about the social and cultural
15:12conditions that make the midlife crisis
15:14possible not only as a concept in the
15:1760s 70s and 80s but also as a set of
15:19experience what happened to enable the
15:22midlife crisis to emerge not in an
15:24individual case but much more widely in
15:27terms of the socio-economic and the
15:28cultural conditions and I want to do
15:30that in two ways in the first instance I
15:32want to think about the standardized
15:35life course that emerged in the middle
15:37decades of the 20th century that created
15:40particular stresses on people at
15:42middle-age secondly I want to reflect on
15:46the meaning and the history of the
15:47phrase life begins at 40 and at the end
15:51I want to argue that it's those two
15:53components that k2 played a key role in
15:55the emergence of the midlife crisis not
15:58just Reggie parens but ours as well so
16:03let me start reflecting for a moment on
16:05the standardized life course there's no
16:08doubt of course that our life cycles
16:10individually and collectively are
16:13governed by our biology but Bernice no
16:17Garson was a very prominent psychologist
16:21in America who wrote extensively on
16:23middle-aged and midlife and the
16:25transitions between very life stages are
16:28various life stages and she pointed out
16:29of course that the timetable the
16:31milestones of life were not merely
16:33biological they were also also socially
16:36prescribed so there was a socially
16:38prescribed timetable she said for the
16:40ordering of major life events a time in
16:43the life span when men and women are
16:45expected to marry a time to raise
16:46children a time to retire so the rhythm
16:49of our life the stages of a laugh the
16:51ages of our life the transitions of our
16:53life was socially prescribed not just
16:56biological and of course if they're
16:58socially prescribed it means that they
17:00can change our understandings and
17:03experience can change our expectations
17:05can change our expectations of the life
17:07course the life course the life cycle
17:10did change dramatically across the early
17:14decades of the twenty
17:15century by the 1950s and 1960s couples
17:23were living longer if you were born at
17:28the end of 19th century early 20th
17:29century in this country we might expect
17:31to live until we were 14 50 60 by the
17:341950s 40s 50s we might expect to live
17:38until well into our 70s or perhaps
17:40eighties so life expectancy had
17:42increased giving us that longer life
17:45cycle and in principle also a longer
17:48period of adulthood or middle age at the
17:52same time we were marrying earlier by 19
17:56in 1911 only about 24% of women were
18:00married by the age of 24 by the early
18:0350s that had risen to 52% and in fact if
18:07you look at some of the surveys of men
18:11and women's attitudes about marriage
18:13during this period most women would say
18:16that the ideal age to marry is between
18:1820 and 24 men ideal age slightly later
18:23but not that much different at the same
18:26time during the early decades of the
18:2820th century it became more commonplace
18:30to have fewer children and to cluster
18:33them together earlier in the marriage so
18:36let's say a couple were married at the
18:39age of 20 or 21 by 24 or 25 they would
18:43have had their two or three children and
18:45they would be then bringing up those
18:47children the children would leave home
18:49so there was a much longer period of
18:51life after the childbearing period in a
18:56sense in this period still that was more
18:58important for women who tended to be in
19:00the workplace less by and large and
19:03looking after the children more men's
19:05rhythm the rhythm of men's life was
19:07slightly different dictated not so much
19:09by the rhythms of the family but by the
19:12rhythms of occupational patterns by the
19:161950s and 60s men tended to work for a
19:19fixed number of years often in the same
19:22job until retirement so you can see the
19:24male life course in some ways also
19:26socially prescribed
19:28from the moment of starting work to the
19:30moment of retirement set by the
19:33government by the state or by private
19:35industries one of the consequences of
19:38this this teasing out of the life course
19:40the the clustering of major life events
19:45in very similar ways across populations
19:48meant that people began to experience
19:50much more clearly defined stages and
19:53transitions in the life course so you
19:55could begin to identify a period of
19:57middle age between 30 and 50 40 and 60
20:01and we could begin to identify those
20:03critical stages of transition between
20:07those life phases now the point I want
20:11to make from this is that there are a
20:13number of consequences that emerged from
20:15this modern standardized homogenized
20:18life course and they linked directly to
20:21the emergence of the midlife crisis the
20:26first impact was the growth of age
20:31anxiety or age consciousness if there
20:36were standard life courses standard
20:39milestones against which we could
20:41measure ourselves we became much more
20:44conscious or anxious about whether we
20:47succeeding or failing against those
20:49milestones so a much greater sense of
20:52where we should be at certain points in
20:54our life and of course that expectation
20:57that we would leave home get married
20:59have children get a job retire our
21:02expectations were raised but at the same
21:04time if we didn't match up to those
21:06expectations if we didn't meet those
21:08milestones follow that timetable we
21:11could be dissatisfied with our
21:13achievements and this led the notion the
21:17phrase keeping up with the Joneses
21:18started in a comic strip in America
21:21about 1913 but it became in those early
21:25decades of the 20th century through the
21:2630s and 40s a key way of us measuring
21:30ourselves against others a driver in
21:32some ways of envy and jealousy a driver
21:35of emulation a driver to increase our
21:39consumption to keep up with the journey
21:41the Joneses we were much more aware of
21:43our place in the world and particularly
21:46where we were failing while we were
21:51becoming more aware we were also
21:53becoming subject in this period two very
21:56different stresses this is the
21:58generation in the fifties and sixties
22:0070s
22:01Reggie parents generation that could
22:03perhaps describe themselves as the first
22:05Sandwich Generation if we think about
22:09the patterns of marriage and child
22:12rearing and aging if you imagine that we
22:15have that couple ideally marrying at
22:18twenty have their children by twenty
22:21five by the time they're 40 45 Reggie
22:25parents age their children will be going
22:27through the troubled years of
22:29adolescence their parents would be aging
22:32through retirement needing more care and
22:34you find in this period the middle aged
22:37between the age of 30 and 50 40 and 60
22:40becoming sandwiched between the troubles
22:44of their adolescent children and the
22:46troubles of their parents so you hit the
22:48midlife crisis exactly when your
22:50children are going through an adolescent
22:53crisis middle age was also challenged
22:58for many people by financial pressures
23:00at this time and again this was a
23:02feature of the changing life cycle in
23:041891 we could expect to inherit at the
23:08age of about 37 now I have to say that
23:11this is a middle-class Western story
23:14this is not true of everybody
23:17although the longer history of the
23:19midlife crisis suggests that the crisis
23:22has been democratized in many ways but
23:25if you were lucky enough to inherit in
23:27the late 19th century you could expect
23:29to inherit at the age of 37 by the 1940s
23:31you would expect to inherit not until
23:33you were 56 that meant that you
23:37inherited it's always nice to get money
23:40don't get me wrong but if you inherited
23:42you inherited after you'd had children
23:44after their children have grown up and
23:46after they left home at times when you
23:48might not need it as much as you had
23:51when you were middle-aged bringing up
23:53children that created us
23:55set of financial pressures on couples
23:58trying to bring up children the final
24:02point I want to make in terms of midlife
24:03pressures and it applies you know the
24:05empty nest is is as it was first
24:08introduced the empty nest in in about
24:101913 it was applied largely to women in
24:12a rather derogatory way that their only
24:14function in society was to have children
24:16and once those children had left they
24:18were of no value but in some ways it
24:21describes a very key feature of the
24:24extended life course that by the 1950s
24:27given the fact that women and men are
24:30marrying earlier having their children
24:31earlier a woman could live for a further
24:3452 years after the birth of their last
24:37child and many years after menopause one
24:41of the things that created in people's
24:44minds was the question is this all there
24:47is do I really want to live like this
24:50with this person for the next 40 or 50
24:53years and a number of the psychologists
24:59in this period pointed out that the
25:01extended life course that continued
25:03pressures of middle age through middle
25:06age meant that many people when they got
25:09to the age of 40 45 began what Robert
25:13Lee and Marjorie Kassabian
25:14referred to in the in the spouse Kappa
25:16don't if you can see weathering the
25:17marriage crisis during middle essence is
25:19the subtitle of the book what they
25:21pointed out that the multiple stresses
25:24during middle age that sense of
25:27recognizing that you were not achieving
25:30what you should have according to the
25:32standardized timetable of the life
25:33course meant that people began to
25:36reappraise their lives to reckon the
25:39achievements against the goals the
25:41satisfactions versus values the kind of
25:44evaluation of his life that Reggie Peron
25:46went through and they began to realize
25:48of course that they hadn't achieved that
25:50they were disappointed and as a result
25:52hit crisis point and Margaret Mead I've
25:57quoted here as an anthropologist in a
25:59very interesting book male and female in
26:011949
26:03published in 1949 pointed out that in a
26:06world in which people may
26:08reorient their whole lives at 40 or 50
26:11that's a world in which marriage for
26:14life becomes much more difficult
26:17Margaret Mead solution and the solution
26:19of some science fiction writers was that
26:21we should introduce the possibility of
26:24multiple serial marriages she suggested
26:28- but many writers at the time suggested
26:30possibly three one for youthful passion
26:32one for Parenthood and one for
26:35companionship in later life that there
26:37were very different demands across that
26:39extended life course at different stages
26:41of your life there was no reason why it
26:43shouldn't be the same person who
26:45fulfilled those sequentially but there
26:49was no reason why it should is what
26:51Margaret Mead was saying Margaret Mead
26:53also appeared in a lot of BBC television
26:55programs on marriage and divorce in this
26:57period now one of the consequences one
27:00of the reasons why this was important
27:02socially and culturally was because
27:04people were concerned in this period
27:05about the levels of divorce and they
27:08linked marriage midlife crisis to a
27:11marriage crisis claiming that partly it
27:14was the behavior of middle-aged men that
27:16was threatening marriages leading to
27:17family breakdown separation and divorce
27:19and this was regarded as problematic for
27:23social stability in the post-war period
27:26before the Second World War fewer than
27:287,000 couples were divorced there was a
27:31big boost after the Second World War
27:33during the late forties to 50 linked
27:36largely to well explained in terms of
27:38hasty marriages during the war the
27:40difficulties that soldiers had
27:42readjusting to civilian life the fact
27:45that during separation both husbands and
27:48wives for example had had affairs those
27:51challenges led to a high level of
27:53breakdown after the Second World War
27:55there was a little bit of a plateau and
27:57then arise through the late 60s 70s and
27:5980s now I don't to say that the midlife
28:01crisis the challenges that people faced
28:03in middle age were the only reasons for
28:05that one of the reasons for the big rise
28:07after 1970 there's a change in the
28:09divorce law the divorce reform act of
28:11her was introduced in 1969 removed the
28:15marital offence and replaced it with the
28:17notion of irretrievable breakdown
28:19making it much easier for some people
28:22to get a divorce but debates about the
28:25midlife crisis in this period and still
28:28I think link it very closely to concerns
28:31about the stability of marriage which
28:33was regarded by many as essential for
28:35social stability let me pause for a
28:41moment then and think again about Reggie
28:46yes
28:47distraught yes going through a period of
28:50psychological angst yes fading
28:54biologically but also in some ways a
28:59victim of very striking demographic
29:02changes across the twentieth century or
29:04very different expectations of the
29:07milestones of life the expectations
29:09about when people would get married have
29:11children get a job retire and so forth
29:14created a set of pressures on Reggie
29:17Peron and his wife and his children that
29:21proved for him too much in some ways
29:26what I've sketched out is what Reggie
29:28Peron was escaping from the stick that
29:33pushed him to behave in these ways was
29:36the social pressures created by the
29:38extended standardized life course but
29:41what did he hope to achieve by it if
29:43that was what he wanted to escape from
29:45where was he expecting to go what were
29:48the benefits of changing his life in
29:50this kind of way and I want to reflect
29:52on that not just the push out of the
29:55mess that he felt he was in but the pull
29:57towards a better life I want to explore
30:01that just by thinking about the phrase
30:02life begins at 40 and where that came
30:05from
30:06and how that played in to the
30:09expectations and the aspirations not
30:11just of Reggie Peron but also many of us
30:13as well
30:16the phrase life begins at 40 was first
30:20used well as far as we know in 1917 by
30:25mrs. Theodore Parsons Matilda Parsons
30:28who was the widow of an army officer but
30:31had already had her career as well
30:33teaching particularly young
30:35women and girls and young women and
30:38older women how to keep fit scientific
30:42bodybuilding is what she referred to it
30:44as and partly it was keeping physically
30:46fit in order to keep the mind fit and
30:48this phrase I loved she was interviewed
30:50in 1917 for the newspaper it was four
30:53days after America entered the First
30:55World War and in the interview she said
30:58very similar set of ideas to what Eliot
31:02Jack's introduced much later in the
31:04sixties it's a paradox of life she said
31:07that we do not begin to live until we
31:09begin to die death begins at 30 that is
31:12deterioration of the muscle cells set in
31:14most old age is premature and attention
31:18to diet and exercise would enable men
31:19and women to live a great deal longer
31:21than they do today
31:22the best part of a woman's life begins
31:26at 40
31:27that was her phrase now there's a
31:30particular context to what mrs. Parsons
31:33was saying and again this is as part of
31:36your argument unless we understand the
31:38social and cultural context we don't
31:40fully recognize the meaning of that kind
31:44of term Theodore parson mrs. Parsons
31:48directed her comments at what she
31:50referred to as the adipose woman of 40
31:53she was addressing middle-aged women who
31:57she felt had let themselves go and the
32:01reason why this was important to mrs.
32:03Parsons was because of the war effort
32:06men were away fighting women were needed
32:10to bring up children to do the work to
32:12support the communities economically
32:15while their men were away so it became
32:18crucial to her that women retain their
32:22fitness physically and mentally as they
32:25aged that notion it's really interesting
32:28that as the notion life begins at 40
32:30became popular the the the first part of
32:33that sentence the best part of a woman's
32:34life begins at 40 got lost in some kind
32:37of translation
32:38it became simply life begins at 40 and
32:41it was popularized in a whole variety of
32:43ways during the 1920s and 1930s the most
32:48common way
32:49or the most popular book was Walter
32:51Pickens book entitled life begins at 40
32:55Pitkin was an American journalist
32:58working at Columbia University in the
33:00taken miss notion that life begins at 40
33:03to write a self-help book and you can
33:06see from the cover of the book through
33:09this book's inspiring and helpful advice
33:10thousands of men and women fearful of
33:11middle age have lost their anxieties and
33:15found new ways to make life richer
33:17happier and more worth living this was
33:19the the the blurb on the book to try and
33:22sell it and the notion both Pickens book
33:24and that phrase life begins at 40 were
33:26used in other areas life begins at 40
33:29was a film in 1935 starring Will Rogers
33:31that was based on the book and there
33:35were some skits there were some satires
33:36as well of this great film in the late
33:391930s entitled life begins at 8:30 so
33:44the idea that life could begin rather
33:48than end at midlife at middle age became
33:52a key part of self-help literature and
33:55advice to middle-aged couples during the
33:5730s 40s and 50s so what did Pitkin
34:02advise people in order to find these new
34:07ways of being happy in fact it was
34:10pretty bland and mundane he pointed out
34:14that happiness comes most easily after
34:1640 firstly by realizing that a great
34:20many years lie between 40 and 70 now
34:24that quite you know that might seem
34:25fairly banal and I think it probably is
34:27but it's it's a it's a twisting on its
34:29head of the concerns of midlife midlife
34:32Reggie parens looking back and saying I
34:34haven't achieved anything I've got
34:36nothing left to look forward to what
34:38Pitkin is saying is yes you have even at
34:41the age of 40 you're going to have 20 30
34:4440 years of your life still make the
34:47most of it and the way you made the most
34:50of it according to Pitkin was that you
34:53pursue self fulfillment through material
34:55improvement leisure and what he called
34:58the art of living much less work more
35:01leisure more play
35:03this process of self-fulfillment would
35:07make those last 30 or 40 years
35:09worthwhile no longer the downward curve
35:11no longer the acceleration towards death
35:13but in fact a fulfilling middle-aged and
35:16older age and this notion became widely
35:20adopted in two particular ways one is
35:22that it was taken as a strategy for
35:25personal renewal this is a way in which
35:27we could refresh and renew ourselves
35:30when we were getting jaded and faded in
35:32middle age begin to realize that there
35:35were things to look forward to that it
35:38was possible to reshape to Ramola life
35:41in more positive ways but the key part
35:45of this and again thinking about this in
35:49social and cultural historical terms the
35:52key part of this it's this this story
35:55that Pitkin was telling was not just
35:58about individuals of discovering
36:00themselves it was also a lesson a
36:02message for populations certainly in
36:05America and Britain during a period of
36:08economic depression during a period of
36:10recession increasingly concerned about
36:12the specter of a second world war during
36:14a period of doom and gloom that if we
36:16reinvigorated ourselves there was hope
36:19for optimism and pickins argument was
36:22that if people as they got older the
36:24middle-aged and the elderly work less
36:27and had more leisure there would be more
36:29job opportunities for younger people
36:30which would boost the economy equally if
36:34people in middle age and older age spent
36:37their money buying things enjoying
36:40themselves purchasing leisure for
36:43example and pleasure that would also
36:45boost the economy so part of the appeal
36:48of pickins work was that it struck a
36:51chord in individuals like Reggie Peron
36:54who were struggling with their own
36:55problems but it also meant something to
36:58a Western world struggling with the
37:00effects of economic recession because it
37:02promised a way out of them and in some
37:04ways a pick in writing in the 30s the
37:071930s were a strangely paradoxical
37:10period a period of
37:15morbid gloom in some kind of ways
37:18because of the recession and because of
37:20the fear of another global war but it
37:25was also a period of incredible optimism
37:27it was the period when the American
37:30Dream was conceived and the American
37:34Dream first appeared in the work of
37:38James Truslow Adams in 1931 the year
37:41before Pitkin published life begins at
37:4440 and it's in the epilogue to this
37:47fantastic overview the epic of America
37:50and in that epilogue he tries to sketch
37:52out the future to move away from some of
37:56the doom and gloom of the interwar
37:58period to say life globally as well as
38:01individually doesn't have to go down
38:03towards death and destruction it can go
38:05the other way and for Adams the American
38:09Dream was not a dream simply of
38:12motorcars and high wages so it's not
38:14just a material dream but a dream of a
38:17social order in which each man and woman
38:20shall be able to attain to the fullest
38:22statue of which they're innately capable
38:24and be recognized by others for what
38:27they are regardless of the fortuitous
38:30circumstances of birth or position so
38:32this was Adams dream and it was a dream
38:34in a sense that resonated very clearly
38:36with what Pitkin was saying we didn't
38:38have to be depressed at midlife and the
38:41middle of the 20th century either we
38:44could look forward with some hope for
38:47this to happen
38:48Adams argued we needed to develop a new
38:51scale and basis for values for Adams
38:55looking forward to the to achieving the
38:59American dream
39:00that meant collectivity trust love
39:04working together to make a better world
39:08so here was this period of economic
39:10recession Pitkin saying yes life can
39:13begin at 40 Adams saying in fact there
39:15is an American dream that we should work
39:17towards in some ways of course what
39:21happened was the opposite those hopes
39:23and those dreams were dashed
39:26they were dashed by the second
39:28World War they were dashed by the
39:30catastrophe of global conflict and they
39:32were dashed in many ways by what
39:35happened afterwards in terms of the Cold
39:37War that sense of optimism that could
39:40create security or the sense of security
39:43that could create optimism they were
39:45dashed during the Second World War and
39:47afterwards what was left of pickins
39:51mantra and Adams dream was simply a
39:55dream of material Plenty the values the
39:59scale the basis of values that dream of
40:01social order that was democratic and
40:03egalitarian Equal Opportunities
40:05occupationally and educationally that
40:08was shattered by experiences in the
40:10second world what was left was the dream
40:12of motorcars and high wages people were
40:14left feeling that they could not achieve
40:17those other
40:18grandiose aspirations that Pitkin and
40:21Adams had set out instead what they
40:24tended to do was search for happiness
40:27and a hurry this is a wonderful book by
40:30Edmund burglar the revolt of the
40:32middle-aged man
40:35published in in 1958 that Edmund burglar
40:39was an American psychoanalyst who had a
40:40very extensive clinic and he drew on his
40:43clinical experience to write about a
40:45whole variety of challenges relating to
40:47marriage middle age and midlife in
40:52particular in relation to men he has a
40:53lovely book published in 1948 saying
40:55divorce won't help if anybody is
40:59interested and his argument in fact in
41:01that book and in this book is that
41:03before a couple run to the divorce
41:05lawyer they should go and see a
41:06psychiatrist that this is about the
41:10challenges within themselves and their
41:12relationships so what he says is that is
41:14that during the 40s and 50s the collapse
41:16of the American Dream in many ways and
41:18you can trace it through American
41:20post-war literature as well in
41:21particular the collapse of the dream
41:23left people struggling and they
41:25translated those struggles or those
41:28aspirations into a dream of material
41:31Plenty into consumption seduced by the
41:34pleasure of consuming material goods but
41:37also the pleasure the anticipation of
41:40consuming our
41:41the people this was the emergence if you
41:43like of a form of narcissistic self
41:45fulfillment that drove some of the
41:49behavior that you see in in Reggie Peron
41:51so burglar four burglar people were
41:54looking for happiness in a hurry and he
41:57has this beautiful passage which
41:59describes very very clearly the thought
42:02processes that he attributes to people
42:04like Reggie Perry in this mindset
42:07stressed by life circumstances feeling
42:10that they had failed feeling that
42:13although they were looking down to death
42:15everybody was telling them that life
42:17begins at fourteen things should be
42:18getting better at that moment they were
42:21anxious and backed more depressed than
42:24they would have been otherwise and this
42:26is the this is the mindset if you like
42:29of a Reggie Peron
42:31I want happiness love approval
42:33admiration sex youth all this is denied
42:38me in this stale marriage to an elderly
42:41sickly complaining nagging wife let's
42:45get rid of her start Life all over again
42:47with another woman sure I'll provide for
42:50my first wife and children sure I'm
42:51sorry the first marriage didn't work out
42:53but self defense comes first I just have
42:58to save myself so what is left of those
43:02aspirations in the midst of midlife
43:04middle-age stress the argument that life
43:08should be getting better not worse that
43:11optimism that we could achieve the
43:13American dreams that was dashed what was
43:16left was a sense of selfish narcissistic
43:20belief that we would do something some
43:24happiness ourselves and this burglar
43:26suggested was why people like Reggie
43:29Peron had crises pushed from their
43:32marriages pushed from their
43:34relationships disappointed in their
43:36lives but seduced by a dream that was no
43:40longer achievable except through the
43:43selfish pursuit of pleasure
43:49let me reflect then to finish on where
43:54we've been
43:59Reggie Peron in some ways spoke for a
44:03generation
44:04he was an everyman if you like and his
44:07wife and children every day victims of
44:09the kinds of pressures that people and
44:12families were under in the 50s 60s and
44:1570s we can certainly understand his
44:19behavior that random impulsive
44:22destructive behavior as the product of
44:26psychological despair I've hit my peak
44:29I've reached my prime but it no longer
44:32means anything because all I look
44:34forward to is the downward curve of life
44:36and death as that sense of an identity
44:40crisis that is captured very very neatly
44:42by David knobs but also you can see it
44:45in other literary and cinematic forms as
44:49well in the fifties sixties and
44:50seventies all we can read it in
44:53biological terms we can say that pairing
44:55is aging he's losing his virility he's
44:59losing his hair he's losing muscle mass
45:03and energy and that leads him into a
45:05crisis of despair as well linked to
45:08death but not entirely the same we can
45:10see this in individual terms this is a
45:12man behaving strangely
45:16what I want to suggest though is that we
45:19cannot understand Reggie unless we cast
45:22our lens wider than that unless we zoom
45:24out to see the social and the cultural
45:26conditions in which Reggie Peron was
45:30living and in which we continue to live
45:32in some ways so there are perhaps two
45:36conclusions that I want to make the
45:38first is that we are aged Reggie us we
45:44are aged not just by our minds and
45:46bodies but we are also aged by history
45:50by the cultural values the attitudes
45:53that beliefs the norms the practices
45:56that we have inherited from the past
45:58some ways Reggie Perry in the late
46:00seventies
46:02went off the rails because of what had
46:04happened in the 1950s and 60s
46:06both in terms of the life course end in
46:09terms of the seduction of materialism
46:14the second point is this that in that
46:16context when we are saying that we're
46:18aged by history and culture within that
46:21context the midlife crisis is no longer
46:24the biological the natural phenomenon
46:28the inevitable phenomenon of aging it is
46:32immediately a social and a cultural
46:34phenomenon the midlife crisis that
46:38Reggie suffered from that we perhaps
46:41continue to suffer from is a set of
46:45experiences that is generated by
46:48historical change shaped by cultural
46:51contexts and social economic conditions
46:53and determined also by political
46:56contingencies thank you
47:00[Applause]

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