The Problem of the Woman of Forty

D. H. Lawrence, who so often shows an amazing understanding of the psychology of woman, has said in his novel, The White Peacock: “This peculiar abnegation of self is the resource of a woman for escaping the responsibilities of her own development. Like a nun, she puts over her living face a veil as a sign that the woman no longer exists for herself. She is the servant of God, of some man, of her children, or maybe of some good cause. As a servant, she is no longer responsible for her self which would make her terrified and lonely. To be responsible for the good progress of one's life is terrifying.”

This penetrating statement is of profound significance when we consider the neurosis which often overwhelms a woman upon the approach of her fortieth year, that period of life which has been called the dangerous age because the libido sexualis announces an approach to the end of woman's biological fertility. But every end is also a beginning: life with its possibilities of an ongoing maturity is more powerful than death and the stagnation of an arrested development; thus, this is the moment that conflict breaks out between the biological libido which is nearing completion and that portion of the libido invested in cultural tasks—which is involved with the responsibility of individuation.

When a woman, through her service to the race with which it has always been possible for her to identify herself, evades the responsibility of her own development, she finds herself terrified and lonely; she is confronted with the prospect of many empty years when her services to the race can no longer repeat themselves in the form of duties rendered to husband, child, or to some good cause.

This responsibility for the good progress of one's life is one aspect of the problem of the fortieth year, an aspect as important as the sexual problem, which also renews its claim at this period of life. I would like to present a case in which neurotic symptoms were in the process of becoming firmly e