ORI GIN AL PA PER

The Aging Process as Forward Movementand the Case for Detours and Backward Steps

Donald Capps

Published online: 24 September 2011� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract This article focuses on Pruyser’s (Pastor Psychol 24:102–118, 1975) view

presented in his article titled ‘‘Aging: Downward, Upward, or Forword?’’ that the later

stages of aging are not a downward movement from a higher peak but the continuation of a

forward movement, and that manifestations of gains as well as losses in older adulthood

support this view. While expressing agreement with this view I draw on Sigmund Freud’s

discussion of the death instinct in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 1920/1959) to

suggest that the later stages of the aging process may involve an increase in detours and

backward movements. Suggesting that these detours and backward steps are potentially

beneficial, I conclude that Freud provides guidelines for how we may view and evaluate

the losses and gains that Pruyser identifies as characteristic of the later stages of the aging

process.

Keywords Aging � Paul W. Pruyser � Iconic illusion � Life span models � Losses � Gains �Forward movement � Karl Menninger � Vital balance � Sigmund Freud � Death instinct �Detours � Backward steps

Introduction

In this article, I will be focusing on Paul W. Pruyser’s article titled ‘‘Aging: Downward,

Upward, or Forward?’’ (Pruyser 1975), in which he argues that the aging process should be

viewed as a forward movement. His article titled ‘‘Creativity in Aging Persons’’ (Pruyser

1987b) was published posthumously in the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic in September

1987, five months after his death. This article draws on the argument developed in the

earlier article but adds several new insights in its support.

In my view, Pruyser makes a persuasive case in ‘‘Aging: Downward, Upward, or

Forward?’’ for perceiving the aging process as a forward movement, especially when this

D. Capps (&)Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street, P.O. Box 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803, USAe-mail: cappsdonald@aol.com

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J Relig Health (2012) 51:479–497DOI 10.1007/s10943-011-9534-0

view is compared and contrasted to the model that he rejects which views older adulthood

as the downward slide from the peak realized in middle adulthood, but I also want to

propose that if the aging process is a forward movement, there is much to be said for

detours and backward steps, as these afford potential benefits. In support of this proposal

I will draw on Freud’s dual instinct theory as presented in Beyond the Pleasure Principle(Freud 1920/1959).

Pruyser’s Professional Life

Before I discuss Pruyser’s articles on aging, a few words about his professional life may be

useful, especially for readers who are unfamiliar with him and his work. My source for this

brief summary of his professional life is Jon G. Allen’s biographical sketch in a special

issue of the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic (Allen 1987, pp. 416–418) in tribute to

Paul W. Pruyser, an issue that included several personal testimonies (including Karl and Roy

Menninger), the ‘‘Creativity in Aging Persons’’ article by Pruyser, an article on religious

challenges of aging by Raymond Studzinski (1987), an article by Karl Menninger on hope

(Menninger 1987), Pruyser’s previously published article titled ‘‘Maintaining Hope in

Adversity’’ (Pruyser 1986/1987c), and a bibliography of his published writings. Allen was the

associate editor of the bulletin. Pruyser had been its editor up to the time of his death.

Born on May 29, 1916, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Paul W. Pruyser did graduate

work in psychology at the University of Amsterdam, and immigrated to the United States in

1948, completing his doctoral work in clinical psychology at Boston University in 1953. He

worked at the National Veterans Epilepsy Center, interned at Boston State Hospital, and

taught at Boston University. From 1954 to 1956 he spent two years as a senior psychologist

at Topeka State Hospital and then joined the staff at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka,

Kansas.

At the Menninger Foundation, he served as director of the Department of Education

from 1962 to 1971, assuming responsibility for all the professional training programs,

which included a thriving Clinical Pastoral Education program under the direction of

Thomas W. Klink, the hospital’s head chaplain. In 1972 Pruyser was appointed Henry

March Pfeiffer Professor of Research and Education in Psychiatry at the Menninger

Foundation. He retired from his full-time position in 1985, but continued as director of the

interdisciplinary studies program, as a faculty member of the school of psychiatry and

mental health services, as a clinical consultant, and as editor of the Bulletin of theMenninger Clinic. He was editor of the Bulletin from 1978 until the time of his death on

April 9, 1987. Although he had struggled with cancer for several years, the immediate

cause of death was a sudden heart attack. He was a member and elder of the First Pres-

byterian Church of Topeka.

In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, he wrote five books, including ADynamic Psychology of Religion (1968), Between Belief and Unbelief (1974a), The Min-ister as Diagnostician (1976c), The Psychological Examination (1979), and The Play of theImagination: Toward a Psychoanalysis of Culture (1983). He edited two others: Diagnosisand the Difference It Makes (1976a) and Changing Views of the Human Condition (Pruyser

1987a), which were published posthumously.1 In addition to his articles in Pastoral

1 Another posthumous article ‘‘Where Do We Go from Here? Scenarios for the Psychology of Religion’’(Pruyser 1987c) was published in the June 1987 issue of The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Iwas editor of the journal at the time. My editor’s column (Capps 1987) focused on his article and four of his

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Psychology and Journal of Pastoral Care, he was perhaps best known to seminary pro-

fessors of pastoral care and to chaplains and pastoral counselors through his book TheMinister as Diagnostician (Pruyser 1976c) in which he proposes that theological concepts

(he calls them variables) may be used as guidelines for ‘‘pastoral diagnosis,’’ and suggests

these as especially salient: awareness of the holy, providence, faith, grace or gratefulness,

repentance, communion, and vocation.2

Imagining the Aging Process

Pruyser’s ‘‘Aging, Downward, or Forward?’’ (Pruyser 1975) was published in PastoralPsychology when he was 59 years old. The fact that his book Between Belief and Unbelief(Pruyser 1974a) was published the previous year and The Minister as Diagnostician(Pruyser 1976c) was published the following year indicates that this was a very productive

period in his life.3 This was also the year that he delivered his presidential address to the

Society for the Scientific Study of Religion on ‘‘Lessons from Art Theory for the

Footnote 1 continuedprevious articles in the journal and also draws attention to the recent publication of ‘‘Maintaining Hope inAdversity’’ in the 1986 winter issue of Pastoral Psychology. It also notes that when he submitted the articlethe previous October, he wrote that he did not want any special consideration from me as editor, but heobserved that, in light of his struggle with cancer, this might well be his ‘‘swan song’’ as far as his work inpsychology of religion was concerned. I suggested that one can almost hear him asking this question of theuniverse—‘‘where do we go from here?’’—and then, having asked it, adding something like, ‘‘But don’t tellme. I’ll want to see and hear it for myself.’’ I also indicated that the article challenges his colleagues toaddress two important questions: (1) Is there a developmental or dialectic dynamic in religion itself thatmoves from more or less anthropomorphic theistic imagery to impersonal or atheistic conceptions? and (2)Is religion, even among the educated and intellectually ambitious, a favorite and socially sanctioned area ofstagnation, fixation, or regression? I suggested that I could think of no better way to orient ourselves for suchexplorations than to read or re-read his A Dynamic Psychology of Religion (1968), Between Belief andUnbelief (1974a) and The Play of the Imagination (1983).2 In Pastoral Care: A Thematic Approach (Capps 2003) I suggested that his own case of Lambert (Pruyser1976), a college student who sought help from a local pastor in the wake of the breakup of a romanticrelationship, indicates that such a diagnosis may focus on the major theological theme (in this case prov-idence), a minor theme that interacts with the major theme (in this case repentance), and a theme that isconspicuous by its absence (in this case, communion).3 We may wonder why he wrote about aging at such a productive period in his life. He had recently writtena memorial tribute to Herman Gijbert can der Waals, M. D. (Pruyser 1974b), a Dutch psychoanalyst who hadfled the Netherlands when Hitler invaded it, who had served as the Hospital director at Menninger and hadalso been a prominent figure in the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis; and 3 years earlier he had written amemorial tribute to Thomas W. Klink, who had served for many years as chaplain and director of thePastoral Care and Counseling Department at Menninger (Pruyser 1971). He had also written an article onscience and values that focused on his own ‘‘odyssey’’ (Pruyser 1973). This combination of memorialtributes to long-term colleagues and professional life review (however abbreviated) may have contributed tohis interest in the aging process. Another factor may have been the long-term effects of what Lawrence J.Friedman in his historical study of the Menninger Foundation (Friedman 1990) calls ‘‘the palace revolt’’—the ouster of Karl Menninger in 1965 as President of the Foundation. Although Pruyser was personally loyalto Menninger (he once told me that Karl Menninger was ‘‘like a father to me’’) he participated in the ouster,believing that it was in the best interests of the hospital. Friedman notes that his ‘‘closest colleaguesacknowledged that Pruyser had taken an emotional beating’’ and that he ‘‘aged precipitously’’ (p. 324). Healso indicates that Pruyser ‘‘was removed as Education Department director in 1971’’ (p. 324) but does notindicate the reasons. Perhaps he was personally motivated to discover the gains amid the losses thataccompany aging.

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Psychology of Religion’’ (Pruyser 1976b).4 A major emphasis of his presidential address—

the importance of the imagination—plays a significant role in his article on aging.

The abstract summarizes the article on aging as follows:

Life views are dominated by an iconic illusion that forces the span of life into a low–

high-low sequence of stages. Aging is seen as a loss, decline, a downhill course. But

while there are losses in aging, there are also gains, and empirical observations show

that many persons enjoy getting older. From a psychodynamic viewpoint the losses

in aging, though painful, are made bearable by considerable gains that afford new

pleasures. Aging’s gains and losses are described, leading to the conclusion that the

life course is neither upward nor downward, but a forward movement full of new

discoveries. (p. 102)

He begins the article itself with the observation that although ‘‘it is true that views on

aging vary by culture and change with the times, nearly all Western views of aging are

similar in one respect,’’ namely, ‘‘the overruling conviction that life has a peak, some-

where, with an upward and a downward slope on either side’’ (p. 102). He cites the first

four lines from William Shakespeare’s sonnet (Shakespeare 1952, p. 1595) as a poetical

expression of this conviction:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

The youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held.5

4 In this address, he suggested that ‘‘certain concepts in the theory of art might be applicable to thepsychology of religion, particularly when one realizes that in ontogenesis the individual tends to beintroduced at once to art and religion’’ (Pruyser 1976, p. 1). He began by describing the reciprocal rein-forcement between art and religion in childhood and subsequent cultural experience, then went on to explorehow the art-theoretical constructions of craft, imagination, and illusion contribute to our understanding ofreligion. He developed the theme of illusion in The Play of the Imagination (Pruyser 1983), introducing thedistinction between ‘‘illusion’’ and ‘‘illusionistic,’’ and making a case for illusionistic ways of thinking andimagining. Following his lead, I made a similar proposal for the relevance of art theory for pastoral theologyin ‘‘The Lessons of Art Theory for Pastoral Theology’’ (Capps 1999; see also Capps 2010).5 Like most sonnets, this one does not simply continue in the same vein for another ten lines, but insteadbegins at line nine (the traditional turning shift) to suggest that the loss of one’s physical beauty iscompensated for if one has been the parent of a ‘‘fair child.’’ Here are lines five through fourteen:

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,Where all the treasure of thy lusty days.To say within thine own deep-sunken eyesWere an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s useIf thou couldst answer, ‘‘This fair child of mineShall sum my count and make my old excuse,’’Proving his beauty by succession thine!

This were to be new-made when thou art old,And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

This shift in perspective does not directly challenge Pruyser’s view that the poem reflects the ‘‘overrulingconviction’’ that life has a peak and that those beyond a certain age (here 40 years old) are on a downwardslope. At the same time, its mention of a compensating factor supports his view (yet to be presented) that oldage is not only one of loss but also of newly experienced gains.

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He adds: ‘‘It does not matter greatly whether the peak is at thirty, forty, or fifty years’’ as

these differences ‘‘may depend on the average expectable life span, the composition of the

population pyramid, the epidemiology of illness, the economic system, and the education

and welfare policies of a society’’ (p. 102). What does matter is that the ‘‘visual imagi-

nation sees a peak, flanked by valleys, one rising, one declining, in an aesthetically sat-

isfying symmetry’’ (p. 102). Thus: ‘‘Life views are shaped by a regnant Gestalt of low–

high–low proportions, an iconic illusion that pre-sorts all perceptions of the life cycle into a

triphasic sequence’’ (pp. 102–103).

Pruyser points out that there are an infinite number of representations of this ‘‘iconic

illusion,’’ and that each one of them reinforces the basic idea so strongly that we take the

illusion for reality ‘‘until a rare or unexpected occasion elicits some puzzlement’’ (p. 103).

These representations include ‘‘the symmetrical model of the peak flanked by two valleys’’;

the curve model used in empirical research ‘‘with its impressive middle section, tapered off

evenly on either side’’; its literary form as expressed ‘‘in the ‘ages of man’ of which

Shakespeare’s sonnet is only one example’’; the linear model which ‘‘presents the image of

the arc of life describing a curve through space again in a rise-peak-fall sequence’’; the

existential version as ‘‘a stretch of contingency, arched in the middle, suspended between

the perplexing ‘thrownness’ of birth and the appalling ‘pushed-outness’ of death’’; the

journeyer’s model which ‘‘shows a crawling babe rising to become a walking, erect adult

who in turn becomes a shuffling, cane-supported oldster’’; the activity model which ‘‘puts

work in the middle, preceded by play, and followed by retirement, which may be just

another word for play’’; and the economic model which ‘‘centers on the productive years,

preceded by a vague stretch of consumerism that contains, happily, a teen-age market [and]

followed by the rentier’s golden years that erode capital and produce no goods, but,

happily, even so provide a market for nursing homes and retirement village builders’’ (p.

103).

As Pruyser calls this an ‘‘iconic illusion,’’ it is not surprising that we would also find it

in the arts, where, he notes, it ‘‘is reinforced by the triptychs of church altars with their

major center panels and minor side wings; by the Laocoon group with its dominant,

vigorous, high-rising center figure, and by the cascading structure of great churches and

palaces whose major cupolas and spires are centered to draw one’s gaze to a rise, peak, and

fall pattern’’ (p. 103). Perhaps its homeliest form is ‘‘the Victorian fireplace mantel

arrangement whose centerpiece, the clock, is flanked by two ornamental vases that are kept

completely dysfunctional’’ (p. 103).

He concludes: ‘‘So much in the world proclaims a tripartite or triphasic pattern with a

dominant center that we come to think of this pattern as a cosmic, ordained reality, and as a

leitmotiv of life,’’ and given its ubiquity, ‘‘This powerful iconic illusion thwarts us from

seeing, or making, alternative patterns’’ (p. 103). On the other hand, there have been

different visions of aging, such as the fact that ‘‘the Greeks prized youth and old age but

seemed to find little to admire about the middle years,’’ and in some societies, especially

those that have established patterns of ancestor worship, ‘‘the aged have such venerable

status and benefits that aging is a positive goal of life and a desirable process’’ (p. 104). At

the other extreme, there are societies in which ‘‘older people have not only been deni-

grated, as they are by and large today, but were even sent into the wilderness to die’’

(p. 104).

These various models indicate ‘‘that culture is a powerful determinant of attitudes

toward aging and, hence, of feelings about selfhood at any age of life’’ (p. 104). In fact,

‘‘The impact of cultural factors on aging is so strong that it is foolish to belittle them as less

real than the biology of aging’’ (p. 104). Also, although in principle cultural factors are

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more changeable than biological factors, cultural change does not come easily, so if we

want our conceptions about aging to change—no simple task—we need, in his judgment,

to supplement ‘‘scientific data-gathering’’ with ‘‘existential inquiries and consciousness-

raising, with keen alertness to the ideological consequences that follow from the dominant

iconic illusion of aging’’ (p. 104). Unfortunately,

It is very difficult to find even provisional agreement on what aging is. If aging is

growing, in what sense does growing continue, stop, or change with the years? If

aging is coming of age, time markers are introduced that set off one period of life

from another for reasons of privilege and duty. If aging is maturing, the noun

‘‘maturity’’ introduces normative ideas about the course of the process denoted by

the verb, elaborated by notions of ‘‘ripe,’’ ‘‘over-ripe,’’ and ‘‘rot’’ borrowed from

horticulture, or by gastronomic notions of aging used in wine and cheese making. If

aging is getting on in years, we may think of judgment beginning to prevail over

action, maybe of mellowing, perhaps of fatigue setting in; psychiatrists have reason

to think of vulnerability and depression…. And if aging is taken as the process meant

to eventuate in being aged, it is largely seen as a foreboding of failing powers and

eventual death. (pp. 104-105)

With these variations in outlook and meaning ‘‘the so-called facts of aging have a rather

dubious status’’ for many of these ‘‘facts’’ are functions of particular viewpoints, disci-

plines, social observations, personal observations, etc., and the few facts that we have are

‘‘so minute and piecemeal that their import is unclear, since there is no way of assigning

specific weight to them’’ (p. 105). He notes, for example, that autopsies have shown gross

erosion of an entire brain hemisphere in older persons who nonetheless experienced

exemplary physical and mental preservation until their last days. How, he asks, can we

weigh this fact against, for example, the slowing of reaction times in reflexes over time?

In light of these difficulties of fact-finding and knowing what to make of the few facts

we do have, it would be easy to become nihilistic about the very idea that we can gain

some understanding of the aging process. However, in Pruyser’s view, such nihilism is

unwarranted for we do know a few things about the aging process. One is that there is no

escape from what St. Augustine identifies as the three presents—a present of things past, of

things present, and things future—and that they ‘‘gradually assume different ratios in each

person’s life’’ (p. 105). Moreover, ‘‘this is an entirely endogenous process, so basic that it

serves as an ordering principle for the smaller facts and more ad hoc observations one can

make about aging’’ (p. 105).6

Nor can one overlook the fact that there is a ‘‘waning of physical vigor and alacrity of

mind as the years roll by’’ and that death ‘‘lurks around the corner and can be held at bay

for only so long’’ (p. 105). He suggests that ‘‘the vital balance quivers between the two

forces of life and death, always precariously, and death has the edge in the long run by the

sheer weight of its inertia’’ (p. 105). On the other hand, one’s ‘‘increasing awareness of this

eventual inertia’’ and of ‘‘the feelings it engenders are everyone’s lot in life and may be the

primary definition of aging each person will arrive at for himself’’ (pp. 105–106). If so, it is

noteworthy in Pruyser’s view that this ‘‘vital balance’’ is experienced by the individual

person as ‘‘an ongoing process of losses and gains, mourning and rejoicing’’ (p. 107). The

problem is that we ‘‘know quite a bit about the losses, and very little about the gains,

because aging has so often been described, under the aegis of our iconic illusion, as a

6 The dictionary (Agnes 2001) defines endogenous as ‘‘developing from within; originating internally’’(p. 470).

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stepwise approach to decrepitude’’ (p. 107). To address this imbalance, he discusses, in the

remaining pages of the article, both the losses and the gains that accompany the aging

process.

Losses in the Aging Process

Although the losses that accompany the aging process have been discussed far more than

the gains, Pruyser cautions that we should not for this reason ‘‘deny or play down these

losses, for coping with them is one of the taxing and energy-consuming features of aging,

which itself may accelerate the aging process and set up spiral effects’’ (p. 107). In a way,

‘‘aging is being put to a test of endurance: failure in coping with any specific loss

undermines the aptness of one’s response to the next loss, while success in coping with one

loss may give one the vigor to face the next with bravery and skill’’ (p. 107).

In his discussion of the losses, he focuses on those that especially involve ‘‘personal

setbacks’’ (p. 107). The first such ‘‘personal setback’’ is the loss of personal dignity. He

points out:

The aged are subject to many indignities that are experienced as a frontal attack on

their self-concept, their feeling of self-worth, and the maintenance mechanisms of

self-regard. Whether these assaults on dignity are purely societal, or whether they are

enhanced or perpetuated by the victims themselves through attitudes of self-fulfilling

prophecy, makes little difference to the actuality of the experience, which is felt as a

narcissistic blow. (p. 108)

He notes that these blows may ‘‘fall harder’’ today, and be felt by more people than in

former ages ‘‘due to the great increase in average life span expectancy from hygienic and

nutritional improvements, medical ‘miracles,’ disaster control, and greater ease in living’’

(p. 108). An irony of the increase in average life span expectancy is that if ‘‘the average

expectancy is low fewer people are exposed to the indignities of old age’’ (p. 108).

The second personal setback is the loss of work. Pruyser suggests that this loss ‘‘runs

a close second in importance to loss of dignity, and may be intimately linked with it’’

(p. 108). He points to a recent book by Terkel (1974) on the work of ordinary or low-

income people which shows that ‘‘workers, by and large, tend to endow their jobs with a

profound sense of vocation full of humanistic, religious, or ethical values that make them

feel a significant part of a quasi-sacred scheme, even if they are by social standards no

more than cogs in a machine’’ (p. 108). These attitudes toward work ‘‘seem to capture

some meanings of the theological concept of vocation or calling, in which work (of any

sort) makes one a participant in creation and providence, giving each person a definite

place and a significant role in a cosmic plan’’ (p. 108). In this sense, loss of work is the

loss of vocation, ‘‘depriving a person of the concrete experience of values and meaning’’

(p. 108).7

In addition to a sense of vocation, work provides a framework for reality testing and

this, Pruyser notes, is ‘‘another factor of great importance to mental health’’ (p. 108):

7 The sense of vocation is one of the seven theological guidelines that Pruyser (1976) in Pruyser’s schemafor pastoral diagnosis. So, too, is providence.

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‘‘Work brings a person into forced contact with the nature of things and materials, with the

resistance of matter, with the contours and definitions of ideas, and the nature of cause and

effect relations, with sensory qualities, mass and force’’ (p. 108). In turn, this contact

‘‘checks the unbridled fantasy, giving a counterweight to the wishes, longings, and

impulses from the id, thereby providing a pivotal point for the ego’s balancing tasks’’

(p. 108). In short, work ‘‘draws us out of ourselves into the world; it forces us to deal with

the actual outlines of reality, shoulders us with obligations, and harnesses our energies’’

(p. 109).

Given the importance of the sense of time to one’s perception of the aging process in

relation to oneself, work is also valuable because it ‘‘structures the flow of time for us into

distinct periods for action and relaxation, work and play’’ (p. 109). It also structures space

in terms of home and workplace and in terms of thought and conversation ‘‘by giving us

opportunities to talk about our work while we are at home and to talk about home when we

are at work’’ (p. 109). Thus, the loss of work ‘‘demolishes this outer structuring device and

forces us to impose arrangements on time and space and social intercourse that have to be

created de novo by what inner structuring resources we have’’ (p. 109). In short, ‘‘Having

to give up working, one’s reality contact may become tenuous, with an automatic takeover

by fantasies that are prone to lead to regression’’ (p. 109).

A third significant personal is the loss of independence. Pruyser observes: ‘‘This is a

subtle thing because dependency and independence are relativistic notions; nevertheless,

they are a powerful factor in life that comes to act as a value orientation because devel-

opment demands that we move in one direction from an original state of great dependency

to one of independence in adulthood’’ (p. 109). He adds: ‘‘This progression and its intensity

are prescriptive; in our culture we are exhorted to be maximally independent’’ (p. 109). In

fact, the very ‘‘ideal of maturity prescribes self-sufficiency, self-help, competence in

managing one’s own affairs, a display of unshakable strength in the face of adversity, the

ability to seek and organize one’s own pleasures and to ward off pain effectively, skill in

seeking our own sources of contact and support, capacity for making friends, ability to earn

one’s own money, and strength to be a good spouse or parent or a satisfied single adult’’

(p. 109). Thus, independence is viewed as a critical component of the very ability to

connect with and relate meaningfully to others.

A fourth personal setback is the loss of time, especially in the sense that one is running

out of available time:

Reality testing suggests that with more personal time behind one, there is less time

ahead. The future is no longer a virtually endless stretch. And there is still so much to

do, there are so many projects to start or finish, so many longings that should be

fulfilled. (p. 110)

In addition, there are persons who feel that ‘‘so many repairs must still be made of

things done poorly in the past, so many faults to be set straight, so much atonement to be

undertaken for previous transgressions’’ (p. 110). Little wonder, then, that the very feeling

that one is aging tends to promote a degree of agitation, restlessness, or hurry. To be sure,

these feelings are found among persons in mid-life too, but there seems to be a greater

sense of urgency in the later years. An interesting complicating factor here is that

exemption from work ‘‘puts much new chronological time at a person’s disposal,’’ but one

‘‘may not know at all what to do with this time; it is unstructured’’ (p. 110). Hence the

conundrum of ‘‘too little time on the one hand, too much on the other hand; too little for

personal synthesis and further maturation, too much for dreaming, trifles, and busywork’’

(p. 110). Such ‘‘situational ambiguity’’ may, in turn, ‘‘activate all kinds of personal

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ambivalence,’’ thus increasing the agitation and making ‘‘the task of coping all the more

strenuous’’ (p. 110).8

Finally, Pruyser adds to these four noteworthy experiences of loss ‘‘a more basic

meaning of loss to which these particular losses owe much of their pain’’ (p. 110). This is

the loss of object relations. He points out that the essence of object relations for his

purposes here is that ‘‘selfhood is a developmental and dynamic function of our relations to

other persons, and vice versa’’ (p. 110). Our nascent selves ‘‘emerge from loyalties we have

toward others, and the love of others is co-determined by the love we have of ourselves’’

(p. 110). Thus, even as every gain in loving, being loved, and being lovable is satisfying

and joyful, so ‘‘every loss is frustrating, saddening, and anger-provoking’’ (p. 111).

The very things we value—such as money, independence, success, competence, pro-

ductivity, dignity, strength, fertility, a healthy and reliable body—are ‘‘taken as proofs of

our lovability when they come our way,’’ and they are also ‘‘intertwined with our love for

the significant persons in our lives who modeled them as virtues’’ (p. 111). Consequently,

any loss that is experienced as something being taken away from us by somebody (whether

a person, group, government, fate, or god) creates a sense that ‘‘we are no longer loved as

we were before and can no longer love in return as before’’ (p. 111). Worse yet is the fact

that the losses we sustain ‘‘may not only be taken as signs of rejection but also become

charged with irrational feelings of guilt and shame, which may turn them into punishment

for transgressions or proofs of our disloyalties’’ (p. 111). To maintain adequate self-regard

in the face of any loss is therefore ‘‘a taxing proposition’’ (p. 111).

Pruyser concludes his discussion of the losses sustained in the later stages of the aging

process with the observation that older persons, especially the very old, are prone to

experience any or all of these losses as abandonment. He explains: ‘‘Being seen and heard

in the marketplaces of life depends to a large extent on one’s own initiative, drive, and

agility; if any of these functions diminish, as they do in aging, through sensory and motor

deficiencies and depletion of energy, one is simply less seen and heard, unless others make

helpful efforts to give him a forum’’ (p. 111). However, such extra efforts by others are

frequently not made, whether from forgetfulness or malignant rejection. In either case, ‘‘the

aged person may well feel abandoned’’ (p. 111), and this very feeling of abandonment may

‘‘re-enliven old childhood memories of abandonment and mourning’’ and ‘‘it may be

experienced more intensely by knowing that one is approaching the ultimate abandonment

of death’’ (p. 111).

As we consider his discussion of these losses, it is well worth noting that Pruyser refers

to them as ‘‘personal setbacks,’’ for the very word setback has the connotation of ‘‘a

reversal’’ or an ‘‘interruption in progress’’ (Agnes 2001, p. 1312). Thus, they are an

impediment to one’s forward movement. It is also noteworthy that in his descriptions of

individual losses he uses language like ‘‘progression’’ and the expectation that one will

‘‘move in one direction’’ on the one hand and ‘‘regression’’ on the other. He also suggests

that a loss may ‘‘accelerate the aging process,’’ implying that the forward movement may

be faster than it ought to be, and that the forward movement is no longer perceived as a

‘‘virtually endless stretch’’ but as limited in time or duration.

If the aging process is one of forward movement (and not a triphasic process of pro-

ceeding upward to a peak and then declining again), the losses to which Pruyser draws our

attention present various impediments and roadblocks in this regard, and there is also the

8 In his comments on the eighth stage of the life cycle (ego integrity vs. despair) Erikson (1963) suggeststhat despair ‘‘expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short for the attempt to start another lifeand to try out alternate roads to integrity’’ (p. 269).

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issue or question of the final or ultimate goal toward which this forward movement is

directed. The simplest and most straightforward answer is that, even as the aging process

begins with birth, it necessarily ends or terminates in death. (The belief in a personal

afterlife is not based on the view that this afterlife is integral to the aging process; rather, it

is a new beginning, a new birth, as it were.) If so, we have reason to raise questions as to

the very use of the language of ‘‘progression’’ for forward movement and ‘‘regression’’ for

backward movement, especially if death is not viewed as an especially desirable goal, end

point, or terminus of the aging process. I will return to this issue later. But first, we need to

consider Pruyser’s discussion of the potential gains in the aging process.

Potential Gains in Aging

Pruyser begins his discussion of the potential gains with the observation that up to this

point he seems ‘‘to have only reinforced the iconic illusion of a low–high–low sequential

pattern’’ (p. 111). He agrees that this is, in fact, the case, for much as he ‘‘struggled to

extricate myself from it, I have demonstrated how much I am still its captive’’ (p. 111).

This being so, he asks the reader at this juncture ‘‘to consider the fact that many aging

persons seem to take their successive losses rather well and do not succumb prematurely to

the strains of aging’’ (p. 111). Pruyser asks: ‘‘Do they have exceptional coping skills, or

does the aging process itself bestow gains and compensations for the losses it imposes?’’

(pp. 11–112). He believes that there is much to be said for the latter explanation, for the

very fact that many individuals—not just the ‘‘happy few’’—appear to age with ‘‘a good

deal of tranquility and considerable happiness’’ suggests that they are ‘‘making some

psychic gains and experiencing some satisfactions along with the losses they sustain’’

(p. 112). But what are these gains?

Pruyser suggests that one such gain is the gradual discovery of some good andwholesome adult dependencies. He explains: ‘‘When the children have grown up, the

parents begin to see how much they depend on their children’s liveliness, attestations of

love and goodwill, and their presence as objects of caring’’ (p. 112). Sometimes this

realization is a reaction to the ‘‘empty nest’’ syndrome as spouses, ‘‘after having taken each

other for granted, discover how much they need one another’’ (p. 112). Also, the necessity

of planning for retirement may result in the discovery of how much we have depended on

our regular work for daily satisfactions and mental equilibrium, and we may begin to take a

new look at our former strivings for independence, finding some of it suspect: ‘‘By

hindsight, some of it was very demanding and overdone, and the promoted ideal of

independence now proves to have been rather fictitious’’ (p. 112). With this realization, one

may begin to relax and to acknowledge ‘‘the healthiness of some dependencies’’ and to

entertain the thought that ‘‘some specific dependencies (e.g., on one’s children, pension

plans, friendships, recreation, simpler housing, mass transportation) are likely to increase

with the years’’ (p. 112).

A second gain is the satisfaction that results from redefining one’s own status. Formerly

defined by occupation, income, and social approval of one’s demonstrated zeal for ‘making

it’—all of which are external status definitions—‘‘the status of the person who knows that

he is aging becomes increasingly defined by himself, in terms of his personal criteria’’

(p. 112). The achievement motive and the social approval one receives for it may give way

to ‘‘a search for idiosyncratic satisfactions; one begins to think of what he really likes to do,

or what he will do the moment he retires’’ (pp. 112–113). Whatever forms this takes, one

‘‘finds a new niche for himself that tallies with his native bent and preferences rather than

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with the dictates of upward mobility and pressures for conformity’’ (p. 113). Thus, ‘‘Fateful

as aging may be in many ways, it also gives new margins of independence for taking a

greater hand in shaping one’s own role and status’’ (p. 113).

A third potential gain, one that may build on the second, derives from the fact that aging

affords the opportunity for discovering one’s own inner world as a worthy complement of,or alternative to, the external world to which one has been enslaved for so long: ‘‘With a

good deal of experience and many memories to look back on, one is in a position to take

stock of oneself’’ (p. 113), and especially to discover that much of the self was thwarted by

undue attention to the ‘‘masked’’ self of social expectation and that keen strivings for

action cut oneself off from ‘‘the satisfactions of contemplation’’ (p. 113). These self

discoveries may, in turn, enable one to develop new ways of relating to the external world,

to embrace ‘‘an ever wider circle of humanity with whom one can identify without pointed

personal or parental narcissism’’ (p. 113). One may befriend whomever one chooses to

befriend, to enjoy encounters with a great variety of people from all walks of life, and

become ‘‘less afraid of slurs of eccentricity’’ (p. 114).

A fourth potential gain is the relaxing of defenses: ‘‘With greater and more profound

knowledge of the inevitable ambiguities of life and acceptance of irreducible ambivalence

of one’s own feelings, unpleasant realities can be faced with less denial, and negative

affects or dubious propensities are no longer so prone to lead to reaction formation’’

(p. 114). Moreover, the hyper-vigilance promoted by the rat race image of life ‘‘can calm

down to normal alertness’’ and some motives for defense ‘‘begin to change, not the least of

which is the reduction in drive level that many aging persons experience’’ (p. 114). For

example, sexual attitudes and activities can become more relaxed, neuroticism tends to

diminish with aging (albeit with intermittent moments of temporary exacerbation), and

‘‘every diminution of a defense yields a quantum of energy that can now be put to freer

use’’ (p. 114).

To put these freed-up energies to use, some older persons seek or create work. This mayin some instances be ‘‘a defensive maneuver against the imminence of death,’’ as a means

either to avoid thinking about death or to consign it to a distant future date because there is

so much that needs to be accomplished in the meantime. But Pruyser believes that it is

likely to be much more than that, for ‘‘work structures time and space, as well as per-

sonality,’’ and ‘‘some work produces gifts that convey love symbolically,’’ such as things

that grandparents make for their children and grandchildren.

A fifth potential gain is a newly discovered capacity to live in the present. If in earlier

stages of life one was ‘‘rushing toward the future with feverish expectations and deep

worries,’’ older persons often ‘‘enjoy more because what they enjoy is now, in the present

moment’’ (p. 114). These pleasures may be small and unspectacular but they are real. In the

case of religious individuals, ‘‘the faith that sustained them in dark moments of the past,

perhaps defensively, is now an enjoyable cosmology that beautifies and validates their

present days’’ (pp. 114–115).

This allusion to religious faith in the context of a discussion of the older persons’

capacity to live in the present prompts Pruyser to comment briefly on two related issues,

the first concerning the fact that persons in the later stages of life tend to think more than

they did previously about their own ‘‘approximate life span.’’ Some believe on the basis of

intuition or family statistics that their life span will be longer rather than shorter. Some, on

the same basis, anticipate otherwise. In either case, being old ‘‘means having to prepare

oneself for death, pondering its meaning, or seeking a meaningful relation to its closeness’’

(p. 115).

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The second issue concerns developmental psychology and, more specifically, the

contrast between the minute age-specific groups into which the young have been subdi-

vided and the tendency to lump ‘‘the aged’’ together into a single group despite the fact that

they may span as many as four or five whole decades. Pruyser observes: ‘‘Despite efforts at

conceiving some subdivision, I am not sure that any compelling developmental distinctions

have yet been made with a holistic tenor; most of them are of situational, fiscal, medical, or

physiological orientation, or based on rather arbitrary chronological age brackets’’ (p. 115).

He suggests that we really do not yet know what the feasible distinctions are because we

have been so ideologically resistant to investigating the process of aging.9

A sixth potential gain that may occur in the later stages of the aging process is the aging

person’s capacity to make identifications or re-identifications with the idealism of youthand to take vicarious pleasure in their activism. Pruyser suggests that a generational factor

may be operating here:

Skipping the intervening generation with its dedication to thought control and

behavior shaping and its penchant for judging and disciplining, aging persons often

feel attracted to youth and deal with young people in a relaxed way, tolerant of their

foibles and positively charmed by their idealism and venturesomeness. Conversely,

many young people feel attracted to the aged, finding them surprisingly congenial

and avant-garde in comparison with the generation of their parents. (p. 115)

Pruyser adds that the delight in one’s own grandchildren ‘‘partakes of these qualities’’

(pp. 115–116). At the same time, the older person’s identification with the idealism of

youth transcends narrowly defined family associations and loyalties for ‘‘the rediscovery of

youth and its goodness amounts to a carefree caring that stands in contrast to the anxious

(and more narcissistic) caring that prevailed during the years of parental responsibility’’

(p. 116). Conversely, the older person’s identification with the idealism of youth may also

be an expression of the desire to reconnect with the youth who continues to live inside of

oneself (See Capps 2011a).

A seventh potential gain in the later stages of the aging process is that aging gives a newfreedom for revealing one’s innermost thoughts. Pruyser believes that this freedom

‘‘pertains to many ordinary people and is not confined to luminaries’’ who, in their

advanced years, share their personal credos with the public. He describes this new

freedom:

However honest and open a person may have been before, aging gives him a new

candor for speaking without inhibitions. He reaps the satisfactions of a delayed

honesty and a latter day openness that exceed everything he has been before. He has

less fear of mockery and retaliation; he can now emotionally afford to show his heart

in his reasoning. (p. 116)

9 I have addressed this issue in my The Decades of Life: A Guide to Human Development (Capps 2008b). Ipropose in this book that Erik Erikson’s well-known concept of the life cycle may be adapted to the decadesof life, with each stage comprising one full decade. Because his model consists of eight stages each of whichis given a psychosocial designation (i.e., basic trust vs. basic mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt,initiative vs. guilt, identity vs. identity confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, andintegrity vs. despair) this would have meant that the life cycle would cover a life span of 79 years. So Iadded two additional stages for the 80–89 and 90–99 decades (release vs. control and desire vs. struggle). Iconsidered adding a stage for years 100–109 but decided that persons who have lived a full century or morehave won the right to call this decade whatever they chose. Incidentally, this conception not only addressesthe problem of lumping all older persons together but also the other issue that Pruyser mentions, that theyoung have been subdivided into minute age-specific groups.

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For some, this freer spirit leads to ‘‘an appropriate militancy in securing one’s rights, or

in doing battle for any oppressed part of humanity’’ (p. 116). Karl Menninger’s activism

for prison reform in his later years is among the examples he mentions.

Pruyser concludes his discussion of the potential gains of aging by returning to the

iconic illusion with which he began and, more specifically, with reference to what he had

called the homeliest form of the artistic renditions of this illusion. He writes:

If these peculiar gains of aging are taken into account, without denying the losses

that also occur, life seems no longer to fit the iconic illusion of the low–high-low

sequence. A new image shapes up; it is as if someone put a bouquet of flowers in the

right hand vase that stands on the Victorian mantelpiece. It has the power to distract

our gaze from the dominance of the clock in the middle. (p. 117)

He adds that this ‘‘botanical association is no whimsical happenstance,’’ and that it has

been made before. He cites one of Johann P. Eckermann’s conversations with Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe in which Goethe, commenting on his review of letters he has written

over the years, observed that he can now see quite clearly ‘‘how one has in every age of life

certain advantages and disadvantages in comparison with earlier or later years.’’ For

example, ‘‘in my forties I was about some things as clear and clever as I am today, and in

many respects even better; but now in my eighties I have yet some advantages which I

would not exchange for the ones I had then.’’ Eckermann responded, ‘‘While you are saying

this, I envisage the metamorphosis of plants, and I understand very well that one would not

like to return from the period of bloom to the time of leafing, nor from the stage of seed and

fruit to the time of blossoms.’’ Goethe replied, ‘‘Your simile catches my meaning per-

fectly,’’ and he noted that ‘‘a well-lobed, mature leaf’’ would not choose to ‘‘go back from its

freest unfolding into the oppressive closeness of the cotyledon’’ (quoted on pg. 117).10

It is noteworthy that Pruyser concludes his article with this conversation between

Goethe and Eckermann because it represents the aging process as one of forward move-

ment and also portrays an older man in his eighties declaring, in effect, that he would not

‘‘like to go back’’ to an earlier time in his life. Thus, this conversation supports Pruyser’s

view that the later years of the life span are not ones in which one experiences a downward

movement from a higher peak but one of forward movement.

It is also interesting to note that Goethe uses the forties as a convenient reference point

as the sonnet by William Shakespeare to which Pruyser refers at the beginning of his article

alludes to ‘‘forty winters,’’ the point at which one begins to lose one’s youthful beauty and

begins to appear like a ‘‘tatter’d weed.’’ Thus, Shakespeare, too, employs a ‘‘botanical

association,’’ but in this case the change is not from ‘‘the oppressive closeness of the

cotyledon’’ to the ‘‘freest unfolding’’ of the ‘‘well-lobed, mature leaf’’ but from the

beautiful flower to the tattered weed. If we view Shakespeare’s image according to the

forward movement model of the aging process, we might agree with Goethe’s point about

not wanting to go back to an earlier stage in our lives but at the same time question whether

we really wanted to continue the forward movement.

Or, to invoke the concluding sentence of Pruyser’ abstract—‘‘the life course is neither

upward nor downward, but a forward movement full of new discoveries’’—we might

observe that these ‘‘new discoveries’’ are not (to invoke a culinary association) all ‘‘pea-

ches and cream.’’ These reflections and observations bring me to the proposal to which I

alluded at the outset, i.e., a view or perhaps model of the aging process that consists of a

10 The cotyledon is ‘‘the first single leaf or one of the first pair of leaves produced by the embryo of aflowering plant’’ (Agnes 2001, p. 330).

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forward movement accompanied by detours and occasional backward steps. I believe, in

fact, that some of the potential gains that Pruyser identifies are actually the consequence or

result of the aging person’s ability to follow a few detours and take a few backward steps

rather than simply forging ahead.

Detours and Backward Steps

To initiate discussion of this proposal, I want to return to Pruyser’s reference to ‘‘the vital

balance’’ that ‘‘quivers between the two forces of life and death, always precariously,’’ and

his suggestion that ‘‘death has the edge in the long run by the sheer weight of its inertia’’

(p. 105). The phrase ‘‘the vital balance’’ is the title of a book by Karl Menninger

(Menninger 1963) for which Martin Mayman and Paul Pruyser were contributing authors.

In Menninger: The Family and the Clinic, Friedman (1990) discusses at some length the

role that Freud’s theory of the death instinct (Freud 1959) played in Menninger’s devel-

opment of his concept of ‘‘the vital balance.’’ A detailed summary of this discussion would

take us too far afield, but it is noteworthy that Menninger embraced Freud’s theory of an

all-powerful death instinct, and that his books Man Against Himself (Menninger 1938) and

Love Against Hate (Menninger 1942) were based on Freud’s theory. Friedman writes: ‘‘By

developing Freud’s concept of a deep, powerful force of thanatos (the death instinct)

emerging and contesting eros (the life instinct) within a person, Karl sought to outline in

these volumes what he regarded as Freud’s most important message—man’s tragic in-

traphysic struggle’’ (p. 121).

On the other hand, Friedman believes that in both volumes Menninger ‘‘treated the

death instinct as a less ominous force than Freud had given his followers to believe,’’ that

he not only ‘‘claimed that its manifestations were detectable in a clinical examination’’ but

also ‘‘characterized it as an eminently manageable phenomenon’’ (p. 121). This is not to

say that his books were ‘‘distortions or popularizations’’ of Freud’s dual instinct theory.

Rather, they were a reflection of the fact that ‘‘in certain areas, Karl openly and

thoughtfully departed from key Freudian tenets’’ (p. 121). For example, in Man AgainstHimself Menninger argued that within each person there is an equilibrium between eros

and thanatos and that it is often unstable. By means of this equilibrium concept he sought

to explain why some persons commit suicide and others do not.

Thus, in contrast to Freud’s view of eros and thanatos as absolute qualities, Menninger

saw them as the two polar extremes on a continuum. In this way, ‘‘Freud’s clash between

the two instincts was reformulated so that the focus was no longer on either of the polar

extremities but on how and why a person moved from one pole to another,’’ and this

movement ‘‘became the crucial element of concern for the skilled diagnostician’’ (p. 124).

Friedman suggests that Menninger’s The Vital Balance is clearest presentation of ‘‘his

concept of shifts on a continuum between eros and thanatos’’ (p. 125).11

11 In a discussion of the dual-drive theory in a section on motivation in the second of two chapters of TheVital Balance (Menninger 1963) on ‘‘Toward a Theory of Human Behavior’’ Menninger and his colleagueshave a rather extensive footnote reference to Freud’s theory of the death instinct. They put forth severalcritiques of Freud’s theory, including his view that the repetition compulsion, which they consider to be ‘‘apurely psychological concept,’’ can be ‘‘nearly equated’’ with ‘‘the physicist’s concept of entropy’’ fromwhich he ‘‘derived his death instinct’’ (pp. 116–117). They also suggest that ‘‘his use of Weissman’s germ-plasm theory seems fallacious’’ for the ‘‘organism never was ‘dust’; if it dies it becomes dust but does notreturn to it’’ (p. 117). It is perhaps ironic that, in their view, Freud was, in effect, misled by the biblical view

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Friedman’s discussion of the connection between Menninger’s ‘‘vital balance’’ and

Freud’s theory of the dual instincts of life and death invite us to take a brief look at Freud’s

own presentation of the theory in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 1920/1959). By

doing so, we will find that it has direct relevance to Pruyser’s view that the aging process is

essentially one of forward movement.

Freud’s theory of the death instinct is presented in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud

1920/1959) in his discussion of the compulsion to repeat (or repetition compulsion). He

notes that this compulsion is especially found among children. With adults a joke produces

almost no effect when heard for a second time and it is hard to persuade someone who

enjoyed reading a book to re-read it immediately (p. 66). Not so with children. They ‘‘will

never tire of asking an adult to repeat a game that he has shown them or played with them’’

and ‘‘if a child has been told a nice story, he will insist on hearing it over and over again

rather than a new one’’ and will also insist that the repetition is ‘‘an identical one and will

correct any alterations of which the narrator may be guilty’’ (p. 66). Freud contends that

this difference between adults and children is due to the fact that the children’s behavior is

more deeply instinctual than that of the adult. If so, this means that the compulsion to

repeat is a manifestation ‘‘of a universal attribute of instincts and perhaps of organic life in

general which has not hitherto been clearly recognized or at least not explicitly stressed,’’

i.e., ‘‘that an instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of thingswhich the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external dis-

turbing forces; that is, it is a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the

expression of an inertia inherent in organic life’’ (p. 67, emphasis in original).

If there is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things then ‘‘it

would be in contradiction to the conservative nature of the instincts if the goal of life were a

state of things which had never yet been attained’’ (p. 70). On the contrary, it would need to

be ‘‘an old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other

departed by the circuitous paths along which its development leads’’ (p. 70). And if we

accept the view that ‘‘everything living dies for internal reasons—becomes inorganic once

again—then we shall be compelled to say that ‘the aim of all life is death’ and, looking

backwards, that ‘inanimate things existed before living ones’’’ (pp. 70–71, emphasis in

original). There was a time when all that existed was inanimate matter. Then, however, a

force ‘‘of whose nature we can form no conception’’ evoked the ‘‘attributes of life’’ in

inanimate matter. This created a ‘‘tension’’ in the living being between its animate state and

its inanimate state, and this tension resulted in the first instinct coming into being, ‘‘the

instinct to return to the inanimate state’’ (p. 71). Initially, it was still an easy matter for a

living substance to die, but as time went on, ‘‘decisive external influences altered in such a

way as to oblige the still surviving substance to diverge ever more widely from its original

course of life and to make ever more complicated detours before reaching its aim of death’’

(p. 71). He concludes: ‘‘These circuitous paths to death, faithfully kept to by the conser-

vative instincts, would thus present us with the picture of the phenomena of life’’ (p. 71).

I find it noteworthy that Freud introduces the idea of detours and suggests that they

make the path to death more circuitous. The dictionary defines detour as ‘‘a roundabout

way; deviation from a direct way’’ and as ‘‘a route used when the direct or regular route is

closed to traffic’’ (Agnes 2001, p. 393). Thus, a detour is an impediment to forward

movement toward one’s destination. Some detours are rather inconsequential as they may

Footnote 11 continuedexpressed in God’s statement to Adam: ‘‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to theground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return’’ (Gen. 3:19 NRSV).

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only involve going a few blocks out of one’s way. Others are more significant, taking one

several miles out of one’s way before reconnecting with the highway or road on which one

was originally traveling. In these cases one can ‘‘lose’’ a substantial amount of time which,

in turn, may cause one to arrive much later at one’s destination than one originally planned.

As a result, detours can be frustrating and, in some cases, they can have serious conse-

quences (e.g., when an ambulance transporting a desperately ill person to a hospital

encounters a major detour).

If, however, the destination is death or the return of the living organism to its inanimate

state, we are likely to view detours quite differently. Freud suggests that when the instinct

to return to the inanimate state first came into existence it was still an easy matter ‘‘for a

living substance to die’’ for ‘‘the course of its life was probably only a brief one,’’ its

direction being determined ‘‘by the chemical structure of the young life’’ (p. 71). When this

way of looking at things is applied to the human organism, we are likely to view detours as

a godsend, and may even think of the deity as the one who not only evoked the attributes of

life in inanimate matter (the original creative act) but also as the one who implanted in our

progenitors the very idea of detours (thus endowing the human species with its own

creative capacities). In any event, the idea of detours has important implications for

Pruyser’s view of the aging process as a forward movement.

In addition to the idea of detours, Freud suggests that there may also be a backward

movement. This suggestion occurs in a discussion of the sexual instincts. Invoking his

earlier observation that external pressures have played a major role in causing the organism

to diverge from its path toward its original inanimate state, he notes that some organisms

have successfully resisted these external pressures and as a result have remained up to the

present time at their original, uncomplicated level. But other organisms have developed

internal features (he refers to them as germ-cells) that, over time, have taken on a life of their

own, separate from the organism as a whole. These germ-cells ‘‘work against the death of

the living substance and succeed in winning for it what we can only regard as potential

immortality, though that may mean no more than a lengthening of the road to death’’ (p. 74).

Freud suggests that these germ-cells would not be able to work against the death of the

living substance if they were not supported by instincts that are no less conservative than

the death instinct, but in a very different way, for these instincts seek to bring the organism

back ‘‘to earlier states of living substance’’ (p. 74). Thus, they are conservative in that they

are ‘‘peculiarly resistant to external influences’’ but also conservative in the sense that

‘‘they preserve life itself for a comparatively long period’’ (p. 74). These are ‘‘the true life

instincts’’ and they ‘‘operate against the purpose of the other instincts, which leads, by

reason of their function, to death’’ (p. 74). As a result, the life of the organism moves with

‘‘a vacillating rhythm’’: ‘‘One group of instincts rushes forward so as to reach the final aim

of life as swiftly as possible; but when a particular stage in the advance has been reach, theother group jerks back to a certain point to make a fresh start and so prolong the journey’’

(pp. 74–75, emphasis added).

Freud goes on to discuss his claim that the only life-preserving instincts are the sexual

instincts, and that there is no basis for arguing that other ‘‘higher’’ human qualities are also

instinctual. He challenges, for example, ‘‘the belief that there is an instinct toward per-

fection at work in human beings’’ (p. 76).12 I will not pursue this discussion here as this

would take us too far afield. What interests me here is the idea that we possess internal

12 He also indicates that these life instincts are separate from—and even in opposition to—the ego. They areno more natural allies of the ego than is the death instinct. I take this to mean that the backward movementunder consideration here is not related to or comparable with the ‘‘regression in the service of the ego’’ as

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instincts for some rudimentary form of animate life and that these instincts arrest the

organism’s movement toward its final destination—which is death—by ‘‘jerking back to a

certain point to make a fresh start and so prolong the journey’’ (p. 75).13 This is not a

detour caused–or made possible–by external pressures but a backward thrust under the

aegis of internal pressures.

It is noteworthy that Freud uses the word prolong, which means ‘‘to lengthen or extend

in time or space’’ (Agnes 2001, p. 1148). The journey is prolonged in part because one

retraces one’s steps to an earlier spot or place but then, having done so, one retraces them

again as one continues forward. Thus, the ‘‘jerking back’’ means that this part of the

journey will not only be repeated but that it will take twice as long as it did originally.

Thus, we have here the paradox that a loss is actually a gain. This would mean that the

losses and gains that Pruyser identifies in the later stages of the aging process are not

necessarily opposed but may, instead, have a dialectical relationship with one another.

Conclusion

As we consider and reflect upon the implications of Freud’s discussion of the death and life

instincts for the aging process, it is important that we keep in mind the fact that he does not

challenge, much less deny, the fact that the destination is death. In fact, he reinforces this

fact by emphasizing that the inanimate state is the living organism’s primary aim or goal.

On the other hand, the idea that this movement toward death is complicated by two

factors—external pressures that make the route more circuitous and internal pressures that

prolong the journey—make the forward movement itself a more complex affair and this

very complexity is potentially beneficial.

I would suggest, in fact, that these two complications tend to increase, not decrease, in

the later stages of the aging process. They have been there all along, but I think that as the

organism comes closer to the end of the journey, these pressures are more, not less likely to

manifest themselves. While this likelihood has implications for longevity itself (see Capps

Footnote 12 continuedformulated by Kris (1952/1964) and presented, interestingly enough, in his chapter on ‘‘the psychology ofcaricature’’ (p. 177).13 It is noteworthy that Freud uses the metaphor of the journey in his portrayal of the life of the organism. Inhis foreword to Aichhorn’s (1925/1968) Wayward Youth he notes that of all the fields in which psycho-analysis has been applied ‘‘none has aroused so much interest, inspired so much hope, and accordinglyattracted so many capable workers as the theory and practice of child training’’ (p. v). He suggests that this iseasy to understand because the child ‘‘has become the main object of psychoanalytic research and in thisrespect has replaced the neurotic with whom the work began,’’ and that this change is due to the fact thatanalysis has itself ‘‘revealed that the child lives on almost unchanged in the sick patient as well as in thedreamer and the artist,’’ has ‘‘thrown a flood of light on the instinctual forces and impulses which give thechildish being its characteristic features,’’ and ‘‘has traced the paths of development which proceed tomaturity’’ (p. v.). Thus, ‘‘It is no wonder that expectation was aroused that psychoanalytic work would provevaluable in education, the purpose of which is to guide the child on his way to maturity, to encourage him,and to protect him from taking the wrong path’’ (p. v, emphasis added). I would simply add that if this paperwere about the early rather than the later stages of the aging process, there would be more emphasis on theproblem of determining the right road or path to embark upon, and it would undoubtedly focus on the otherside of the dependency/independency dynamic that Pruyser discusses in relation to one of the gains of olderadulthood (see also Capps 2011b). On the other hand, the issue of determining the right road is directlygermane to the problem of dementia (especially the much discussed Alzheimer’s type), for one of thecommon features of its advanced stages is the tendency to, quite literally, lose one’s way or wanderaimlessly about (see Capps 2008a, pp. 26–27).

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and Carlin 2009), it also has implications that are more qualitative in nature (i.e., they

concern what are commonly called ‘‘quality of life’’ issues). I will not attempt here to

determine whether some of Pruyser’s losses and gains are more conducive to the quality of

the forward movement than others, much less attempt to identify them. But I believe that

Freud has given us some guidance in this regard by means of his view that there are two

ways in which the forward movement may be altered or modified—either through detoursthat make the forward movement more circuitous or through backward steps that prolong

the journey. Also, it may be that it is of the very nature of old age that one will be less

frustrated and impatient with the detours and instead be more attracted to the views that

one would otherwise not experience at all, and that one will not be quite so upset when one

is forced to retrace one’s steps because one knows that in this case losing time is itself a

gain, not a loss.

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