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PaulHoule · 2023-07-18 · Original thread
There is this book

https://www.amazon.com/Passages-Predictable-Crises-Adult-Lif...

which factually points out that most people go through several crises in their adult life. As a rule of thumb you have one every seven years or so. I had one around 30, another in my early 40s, and another at 49. If you read between the lines in Freud you could also get the picture that a psychoanalysis would be likely to span the duration of such a crisis (say 18 months) and improve the outcome you get.

The author, Gail Sheehy, gave a talk at Ithaca College about a decade ago and actually said that she disowned that book for a few reasons:

(1) Passages is positive for divorce as a way that people who are evolving at different rates and in different directions to realize themselves. She realized later on that divorce is overall highly destructive.

(2) The paths that people take aren't quite so predictable.

(3) Passages was based on a study of graduates of an elite school, one thing that stands out is that none of the case studies consider serious deprivation, in fact you never once hear that somebody wanted to do X or Y but didn't because they couldn't afford it. In the sense that the experience of most people is "dark matter" you might want to read

https://www.amazon.com/Silences-Tillie-Olsen/dp/1558614400

In particular divorce might work out well for somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk who can trade in their tired old nag for a hot young thing but for most ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful.

Sheehy went on to write numerous more books on the same subject.

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