The final challenge: ageing, dying, individuation

This paper is about the psychotherapy of a woman who passed from what Waddel (1998) would term "older age" to "later life", by which latter I mean the inevitable decline into dying and death. However unwelcome these developments may be to the individual, they are nonetheless activities of the soma, and therefore activities of the self -deintegrates. Much of the work of the psychotherapy centred on the task of enabling the patient to relate to and accept the bodily and emotional correlates of this process, which she tended to want to disown and deny by means of a split between mind and body along the lines of a longstanding internal depressive relationship. Permitting her contact with herself allowed her a much greater sense of internal company and peace, and arguably facilitated an easer process of dying, involving a self reconciled with itself rather than one at odds. Technically, the approach involved a greater concentration on the intrapsychic relationship between patient and analyst, and this is briefly discussed in terms of the work of Armando Ferrari who had himself died, shortly before the paper was first presented, and to whom therefore it is in part a homage.

Keywords: Death, depression, deintegrate, dying, Ferrari, Matte Blanco, old age, self

Richard Carvalho, L’ultima sfida: invecchiare, morire e individuarsi in "STUDI JUNGHIANI" 31/2010, pp 7-26, DOI: 10.3280/JUN2010-031002