The passage of time can ultimately achieve some of what the psychotherapeutic process aims to do—destroy an individual's dream, an unconscious fantasy of an ideal life. Midlife is a period of reflection, a reevaluation of one's life (Freund & Ritter, 2009), a moment to pause and assess where one has found themselves. However, this quest is seldom only conscious. While one may ponder how much of their life lies ahead and whether it suffices to achieve their childhood, adolescent, and early adulthood dreams, the process of sobering up is often unconscious, accompanied by anxiety, depression, feelings of being lost, deflated, having taken the wrong turn, with regrets, anger, and resentment for the wrong choices made. The despair accompanying the realisation of one's limitations can lead either to depression, resignation, and numbness, or a manic escape into a sense of freedom through escapism and detachment from the present and past. Anything to keep the fantasy of a better life alive—the fantasy reframed into a dream to make it seem more attainable, serving to keep despair away from consciousness. This period is often referred to as the midlife crisis, when those who never considered therapy in their twenties and early thirties may seek help in their late thirties and forties.
There is, however, a problem with the concept of midlife crises. By applying the term to a phenomenon, we may define it without truly understanding it. Thus, diagnosing a midlife crisis may not help us comprehend the underlying issue, which is very complex and personal to the individual. Instead, paradoxically, it may lead us to avoid the very phenomenon we are trying to understand. On the other hand, there is a specific type of presenting issue that may bring someone to therapy, often at a particular point in life, with specific symptoms, regrets, realisations, and resignations. For this reason, avoiding the term "midlife crisis" would not do justice to these presenting issues.
Midlife Crisis and the Conscious Mind
Midlife marks a transition from early to middle adulthood, typically occurring in the early forties (Freund & Ritter, 2009), or as early as the mid-thirties for some (Jacques, 1965). During this time, individuals review and reflect on their accomplishments—personal, professional, social, and more. The achievement of past dreams is reassessed.
Midlife is a time of reflection on the past and contemplation of the likely future it leads to. It is a point of shedding the fantasy of one's dreams fully coming true, often accompanied by regret, disappointment, despair, and a sense of futility. Disillusionment is bound to set in at some point—even for individuals with strong narcissistic defences, who may fend off despair, hopelessness, and the loss of youth for a long time. Midlife is also when one realises that the potential the future holds is much less. The options one is left with are scarce, and the rest of life is more determined and less flexible to significant changes than it might have been a decade ago.
Such realisations can be accompanied not only by deep despair, depression, and grieving over choices not made and potential not realised, but also by anxiety, panic, manic escapism, and impulsive attempts to regain what has been lost. It is a moment of realisation that one's omnipotence is no longer real—that it has never been real—and the finality of life (Gabbard, 2013).
For some, the inevitability of death may be both sobering and depressing. However, in clinical settings where people face midlife challenges in psychotherapy, distress is more often caused by the death of a dream rather than life's inevitable end.
For instance, a successful professional woman in her late thirties, who has been pursuing her career goals with the perception—more of a rationalisation than reality—that she must dedicate her young adulthood to building a career, may slowly face the inevitability of time passing. Just when she begins to think there must be more to life than success, she might realise that her relationship has deteriorated beyond repair and that her time to start a family is running out. Loneliness sets in as she faces the desolate reality of her future.
Consider, for instance, a mother in her mid-forties whose children have reached early adulthood and moved on with their own lives. Having spent much of her early adulthood as a mother, she imagined herself still young once her nest was empty, ready to enjoy life to the fullest. However, the contentment she had expected from her newfound freedom does not seem to materialise. Moreover, without her children her identity as a caring mother fades, along with a sense of meaning and purpose tied to this role. She now feels empty, trapped in an unfulfilling romantic relationship, yearning for something more—something to rekindle her spark. But there is nothing. Realising that she needs to change her life to find fulfilment is not an option for her; it is too devastating. She experiences loneliness and confusion, wondering if she took the wrong turn somewhere along the line.
Midlife Crisis and the Unconscious Fantasy
Midlife crisis, however, is not mainly caused by conscious contemplation and reevaluation of one's achievements and shortcomings in life.
Clinical experience suggests that midlife crisis is mostly caused by the collapse of unconscious fantasies rather than conscious dreams. This leads to despair, resignation, depression, and a sense of defeat and futility. Because of the unconscious nature of the collapsed fantasy, the depressive state may seem random and out of place.
The fall of the dream also increases the experience of loneliness (Cohen & Junkers, 2006), which may seem out of context as the individual might be surrounded by people and have a wide social circle. Such loneliness stems from the individual's internal loss of identity linked to past dreams, ambitions, goals, and aspirations. The loneliness experienced is internal and unrelated to the individual's external reality. It reflects the deterioration of the person's identity and sense of self, as they are left without an important part of their internal world on which they relied—the unconscious fantasy that gave them hope.
Midlife Crisis and Berne's Santa Claus Fantasy
Berne (1966), while describing the so-called Santa Claus fantasy—his version of the unconscious fantasy—vividly describes the process of its fall. While Berne was referring mainly to the fall of fantasy in the course of the psychotherapeutic process, the same applies to what seems to happen during the midlife crisis.
Berne (1966) states that in the Santa Claus fantasy "the individual bases his behavior and his plans on the assumption that if he behaves a certain way he will eventually be presented with a unique object that will bring him the highest degree of happiness" (p. 283). However, whatever the individual "is expecting for his good behavior, he is doomed to disappointment" (p. 283). He further explains: "Healthy people learn to resign this quest in favor of what the real world has to offer but, to some extent, feel the despair that comes with such resignations" (p. 283). This is the process that Berne (1972) refers to as the dissolving of childlike illusions. As such, "in more sensitive, perceptive, and intelligent people these illusions resolve one by one, leading to the various life crises" (Berne, 1972, p. 26).
What Berne describes here is the collapse of the unconscious fantasy, typically facilitated by the psychotherapeutic process. However, it can also occur naturally through life's course, most often during midlife. The issue is that when the fantasy collapses naturally during midlife, it should be resolved in therapy. Without the resolution, the individual may remain in a perpetual state of despair, resentment, and discontent.
What Is an Unconscious Fantasy?
It is hard to discuss unconscious fantasies because they seem abstract to most people—even professionals not working with the unconscious may struggle to grasp the term. However, unconscious fantasies are far from abstract. In fact, once uncovered, they can be quite specific and feel very real. These fantasies form during childhood as a person experiences adverse or traumatic events. For instance, when early trauma occurs in the relationship with a parent, the child creates unconscious fantasies to cope with the pain, make sense of it, and, most importantly, maintain the perception of their parent as "good" while retaining hope for a better future. When explored later in life, these fantasies relate to and indicate the trauma that caused them to develop. I discussed the concept of the unconscious fantasy in more detail here; however, it is best illustrated with an example.
Consider a young single woman in her late thirties. She engaged in psychotherapy due to recurring issues with her romantic relationships, which were volatile and often ended with her feeling used and taken advantage of by her partners. She felt overwhelmed by her friends and family and sought the perfect partner to save her from her needy family and help her distance herself from her toxic and dependent friends. She was increasingly aware of the possibility of living out her worst nightmare—a life of loneliness and no relationships. Entering midlife highlighted her lack of time to achieve the life she wanted—the life of freedom, peace, and limitless love. This caused panic, anxiety, fear, and dread of loneliness. Having tried all other means to cope with her distress, she turned to therapy as a last resort. She gave the impression of a lost and abandoned child cast into the cold adult world alone, with her dream of ultimate and endless love shattered. This was also how she felt. Why was her life like this? The answer lay in her childhood experiences, which caused an unconscious fantasy to develop, leading to her midlife crisis as the fantasy remained unattained. As a child, she took on the role of a parentified child, soothing her mother's abandonment fears during continuous conflicts with her father. She unconsciously became the family's psychological caretaker, acting as its guardian in toxic, distant, and volatile relationships. In this role, she felt trapped, unseen, nonexistent, and lacking freedom, which were her previously unconscious experiences and which were only uncovered during the psychotherapeutic process. As an antidote, an unconscious fantasy developed: if she met others' needs well enough, she would find the perfect man to see, acknowledge, and save her from her needy family. If she could meet everyone else's needs, including her family's, she would be able to live freely. While this was her unconscious fantasy, a deeper layer existed beneath. Precisely because of this fantasy, she had a deeper motive to destroy any prospect of a prince charming, as such a saviour would, in her child-like logic, cause havoc on her family. In her unconscious mind, she perceived that without her as a cohesive force, her family would fall apart. Leaving her family could lead to her internal collapse, causing fears of abandonment. She realised she had been sabotaging all prospects of romantic relationships to remain forever attentive to her family and dependent on them. This realisation made her see the reality of her ruined past—ruined by dedicating it to her family rather than to her own needs and life. It also led her to realise the sobering truth: that she would never meet the ideal saviour, as they were mere distortions of reality caused by her unconscious fantasy. The collapse of this fantasy caused her to perceive her past as wasted, leading to anxiety, anger, and a constant feeling of shortness of breath.
Regrets and the Need to Mourn the Past and the Future
Midlife crisis, to reframe Seneca, is governed by the realisation that much of one's life is already claimed by death. The past represents lost potential—both the past and future potential. As such, it is not only the past that is claimed by death; that is the past life no longer exists. The past and one's present circumstances also define the remaining potential for the future. Mistakes or wrong choices in early adulthood—whether in career, relationships, or life in general—affect not only one's current life situation but also impose limitations on the future. A career decision made in one's early twenties often shapes life in their forties, though this may only become apparent in their forties—when it is already too late. This realisation can be shocking and devastating. There is, however, an inevitability in facing—consciously or unconsciously—the consequences of past choices, how they determine the present, and the destruction they cause to the future. When a person comes to therapy because of the distress caused by midlife revelations, it is often difficult to face their past. Doing so forces them to confront the reality of their future.
Consider a professional in her early forties who built a successful business throughout her thirties. She began experiencing anxiety, depression, deep sadness, unfulfillment, lost time, and repeated failures in her relationships, prompting her to engage in psychotherapy. Despite having a family, her focus had always been on business, driven by an unconscious fantasy that achieving ultimate success would allow her to live freely, meet her own needs, and escape the demands of attending to others. In therapy, she realised that her career was a form of escapism from life's demands and the neediness she saw in others. Although business success provided excitement and escapism, it never gave her the ultimate fulfilment she sought, nor did it fill the emptiness that accompanied her throughout life. Reflecting on the past years of destruction—the destruction caused by pursuing success, which was merely a mirage of meaning, purpose, freedom, and contentment—was difficult. It was not only hard because she realised how many years she had lost, but also because she saw the destruction of her future. She had no friends, a distant relationship with her two young sons, and a failing marriage. The only relationships she had were business-related, and as she was about to exit her company, these too would soon end. She would be as free as a bird, but this was not the freedom she yearned for. It was a freedom filled with emptiness, regret, failure, anger, and resentment.
Grieving the destruction of the past was hard, but grieving the destruction of the future—the potential that was no longer there—was much harder.
Conclusion
The transition from early to middle adulthood is often marked by the realisation that time is a powerful force, capable of shattering the narcissistic defences of omnipotence and limitless opportunities. With it, the dreams and fantasies of eternal youth, unfathomable success, and infatuating, oceanic love also crumble. The power of time prompts not only conscious contemplation and reevaluation of one's goals and achievements but also challenges unconscious fantasies. The collapse of these fantasies causes significant distress in midlife. This distress, due to the unconscious nature of the fantasies, can be difficult to link to immediate life context. A midlife crisis is like hitting "the wall" during a marathon—just when you believe you are at peak performance and unstoppable, it hits you like a ton of bricks, halting you and draining you of all hope.
Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), PTSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor
Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London, UK. He is also a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (PTSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He was also a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.
References:
Berne, E. (1966). Principles of group treatment. Grove Press.
Berne, E. (1972). What do you do after you say hello? The psychology of human destiny. Grove Press.
Cohen, N. A., & Junkers, G. (2006). On loneliness and the ageing process. In Is it Too Late? (1st ed., pp. 27–39). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429476266-2
Freund, A. M., & Ritter, J. O. (2009). Midlife crisis: a debate. Gerontology, 55(5), 582–591. https://doi.org/10.1159/000227322
Jaques, E. (1965). Death and the mid-life crisis. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 46(4), 502–514.
Montero, G. J., de Montero, A. M. C., & de Vogelfanger, L. S. (2013). Interview with Glen O. Gabbard (USA). In Updating Midlife (1st ed., pp. 93–102). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429484650-9
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