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Self-help, marriage guidance and the making of the midlife crisis

In 1965, the Canadian-born psychoanalyst and social scientist Elliott Jaques introduced a term – the midlife crisis – that continues to structure Western experiences and expressions of love and loss in middle age. Jaques’s early work, carried out at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations during the 1940s and 1950s, had focused primarily on the ways in which social systems operated as forms of ‘defense against persecutory and depressive anxiety’ among their members, as well as a mechanism for protecting the integrity of the system itself. During the following decades, Jaques became an influential figure in studies of bureaucracy, managerial accountability and leadership, as well as human capacity, work and social justice, introducing terms such as ‘corporate culture’ and ‘requisite organisation’ into discussions of occupational hierarchies and working practices. Jaques’s contributions bridged a number of academic domains – including sociology, psychology, economics and applied research – but his theories of the interrelations between individual, institutional and social behaviour were connected through his preoccupations with time, creativity and trust. Although Jaques’s sociological and psychological writings were plainly patterned by his empirical studies of organisations such as factories, churches and health services, they were also affected by his training and practice as a psychoanalyst and by the theories of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion. These influences are