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I would like to address what I see as one of the major issues confronting older individuals in the United States today: the issue of dealing with their sexuality. Many septua-and octagenarians have few neurotic “no-no's” when it comes to the subject of sexuality. They often have benefitted from experience or are capable of benefitting from analysis or therapy. What is often at issue, is the attitude of the younger people around them, including those in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic professions, which prevent older individuals from being happier than they are. Instead of seeing to it that the golden years of our senior citizens are ‘gilt edged’, we often wind up making them quite ‘guilt lined’.
In the pages to follow, I will make brief reference to some of the demographic and social factors affecting older individuals in this country. In addition, I will present a survey of the rather sparse psychoanalytic literature on the subject of sexuality in the older patient. Finally, I will offer some clinical material from my own work with older patients, with a special emphasis on sexual issues which arise in such treatments. In so doing, I hope to underscore certain transference and countertransference problems which are encountered in working with such people, in the hope that more analysts and therapists will turn their attention to this vastly underserved population segment.
At this moment in time, approximately 12% of the population of the United States is over the age of 65 and about one-quarter of the populace of this country is over the age of 50. This is an ever expanding social group, which increasingly is demanding representation