You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In The Power of Aging, François Villa, chair of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology at the University of Paris Diderot, prolific scholar in psychoanalytic journals, and author of La notion de caractère (2009), proposes a metapsychological model of the phenomenon of aging, as distinguished from biological and developmental theories.
The model Villa presents is based on his reinterpretation of drive functions in the process of aging. Eschewing an exclusively biological explanation of the process, Villa argues that aging is a psychic and somatic mark of life against death: “Aging means not to die”; “To become old shows the capacity to stay alive” (p. 50; translation mine). These aphorisms capture Villa's reinterpretation, one that not only opens new clinical perspectives but also shows the plasticity and inherent potential of the drive theory model.
For Freud, psychoanalysis was contraindicated for the elderly because of its lengthy duration. However, Villa, inspired by Freud's “Analysis Terminable and Unterminable” (1937), in which psychic activity is recognized as endless, reasserts the vitality of the drives in psychic life until the end. From an economic point of view, based on the Freudian conception of drives as a source of pressure for psychic work, Villa argues that aging, with its related