If you look around the auditorium at most any psychoanalytic conference, you will probably find that a great many of the seats are filled by women over fifty. Yet the presentations these women are offered rarely deal with the joys and difficulties of growing old in today’s youth-oriented culture. We suspect that one reason for this omission is that aging in itself tends to be associated with illness, death, irrelevance, and disconnection – issues that few of us want to face. But even more significantly, women who have outlived their sexual desirability and reproductive value, and consequently often go unseen and unheard in our society, may not be considered worthy of psychoanalytic attention.
Despite these caveats, we strongly believe that the articles in this issue will persuade you that there is much to be gained by attending to women’s aging. Our issue opens with Mark Freeman’s article, “The Sacred Beauty of Finite Life: Re-Imagining the Face of the Other,” in which he movingly recounts his relationship with his mother during the ten years of her dementia. As Freeman notes, his article centers around the terms “sacred,” “beauty,” and “finite life.” He writes: “By examining them one-by-one and discerning the nexus of their interrelationship, we may be better poised to re-imagine the face of the Other and to recognize, in life’s transience, what is most precious and enduring” (p. 161).
Susan Sands’ article, “Body Experience in the Analysis of the Older Woman,” fills a gaping hole in our field – the bodily experience of having an aging body. She focuses on what she calls the “body sense,” which she suggests needs to be “remade” throughout life. In addition, Sands contends that analysts must help older patients face death, This, she suggests, is best accomplished when analysts reveal that they themselves are grappling with human mortality. She offers a vivid description of her treatment of a 69-year-old woman in which both her patient’s body and her own played crucial roles.
In their article, “When ‘Old Ladies’ Meet: On Being Seen and Heard in a Lonely World,” Annette Richard and Doris Brothers explore the unique relationships that sometimes develop between aging women who become friends or analytic partners. Their article examines a number of relevant topics, including Adam Philips’ reframing of helplessness and vulnerability as not only a curse but also a blessing; Mark Freeman’s concept of “narrative foreclosure”; and the effects of what Jill Stauffer terms “ethical loneliness.” Doris Brothers and Annette Richard each present an illustrative clinical vignette.
Renée Cherow-O’Leary opens her article, “Mirrors, Passion, Power, and Spirit: Fact and Fiction in the Stories of Aging Women,” by analyzing the story of Snow White with special emphasis on the wicked queen for whom she unexpectedly feels sympathy. Her article makes use both of imaginative literature and of responses to a questionnaire distributed to her alumnae class at Barnard College. Cherow-O’Leary examines the components of passion and speculates on what power can mean to women.
Carol Levin explores her personal journey to finding wisdom as she is growing old. In spite of the good fortune of good health and longevity in her family, she is ever aware that she has lived most of her life, and she describes how living is changing for her as she approaches 75. It is only after their deaths that she has become able to memorialize her parents and claim the valuable things she internalized from them, an important piece of the work of living. Levin shows how she has become more patient and flexible in her clinical work, and she actually discovers in writing her essay that she is approaching retirement, a true fact, she says. Writing has helped her bring coherence to her life story. She feels happy with her life as a wise woman who is free to wear purple.
The issue ends with Estelle Shane’s intensely personal reflection on aging. She poignantly describes her transformation from a fat little girl into a young woman whose appearance in a bathing suit “caused a stir,” and then into a woman in her thirties, when “men seemed not to respond when I entered a room” (p. 218). She recounts her experiences with illness and how “being ill feels like being aged” (p. 219). She also explores what it means to be perceived as an old woman by her patients and therefore closer to death.
Doris Brothers, Ph.D.
Estelle Shane, Ph.D.
Issue Editors