Growing Old: Struggling With Fading Productivity

In this article I shall discuss the waning of productivity when getting old. That process is usually gradual and therefore manifests more clearly in certain abrupt changes of life, for instance when ending one's professional career. I inspect this issue through my own experiences, with some theoretical psychoanalytic viewpoints and through some narratives presented in Greek mythology and by Albert Camus. In Greek mythology Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up the hill eternally. As he reaches the top of the hill, the boulder escapes from his hands and rolls back down the hill. And he must start the process from the beginning. Through Sisyphus I describe the propensity to manic defences in stressful life events. In Greek mythology Lethe is the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion. In my article she presents the capacity for the recognition of one's own finiteness. Albert Camus represents in this article the capacity to understand the absurdity of life as we cling to life at the same time as we are in the death row. I use my own experiences of becoming a pensioner as a clinical example of this process.