The paper focuses on some psychological factors specific to the psycho-developmental tasks involved in ageing that may lead to a considerable loss of resilience and psychological breakdown for the first time since becoming adult. Issues connected with the potential increase of dependency, especially physical dependency are often central. The paper gives an account of reasons why this may be more threatening to some than others including the reawakening of childhood failures of dependency and also identifications with disturbing dependency experiences of late life of one's parents.