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The central conceptualization of The Middle Years which emerges from a reading of the whole, rather than any single article in this edited volume, is that normal and pathologic development in midlife is increasingly influenced, as the years pass, by the growing awareness of time limitation and personal death. Oldham and Liebert (to whom the book is posthumously dedicated) suggest in their preface, correctly so it seems to me, that this growing, normative preoccupation with death may explain why "remarkably scant attention has been given to the middle years as an entity for psychoanalytic exploration … because … the elements of waning and loss that are intrinsic in this period—the very things that bring many of our patients into therapy and analysis—have been discordant with the generally optimistic outlook of the field" (p. 2).
However, this recognition of the importance of aging as the most powerful developmental stimulus in midlife is balanced by the recognition by several authors that, to quote Arnold Modell, "for many people the middle years are the best years of their lives" (p. 25). Elizabeth Auchincloss and Robert Michels (Chapter 4) relate this good feeling to the stability of the middle years which offer comfort and security to many, while Milton Viederman (Chapter 16) speaks of "a mutative effect of experience that decreases vulnerability in the system of self-esteem regulation and increases resilience to narcissistic injury" (p. 224).
A recognition of the need to integrate these two polarities in our theory-building and clinical practice is beginning to emerge in the psychoanalytic literature. It is evident in this book, not only in the several places already noted, but also in the chapters by Carol Nadelson (8), Lila Kalinich (9) and Otto Kernberg (15).
Before beginning a discussion of some of the eighteen chapters, I would like to mention two negative criticisms I have of the book. The first has to do with form and the second with content. Approximate