Chapter 8 The Selfobjects of the Second Half of Life: An Introduction

Over the past several years we have been trying to understand the role of selfobjects throughout the course of life. When we tried to describe some of the psychological functions that other people play in the life of adolescents, children, and infants, it was easy to find vast and relevant commentaries on the issues that interested us within psychoanalysis. Although we disagreed sharply with some of the ideas of other analysts, we could discuss young people's connections to other people within the context of the work of several others who had approached the problem in some depth. Their work, in turn, interdigitated nicely with many of studies by psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists that sharpened and clarified psychoanalytic ideas.

In turning to similar questions about the functions of other people and development in the second half of life, we entered virtually uncharted analytic waters. A very few psychoanalysts have explored adult relations with others, except from the point of view of repetitions of early childhood attachments. Although there is a large social science literature on adult development, it tends to focus on what might be called “the management of decline.” Only in the last decade have important studies of adult development appeared that focus on the emergence of new capacities. Even so, the dominant theme continues to be the problems of age, especially after the fifth decade.