The Middle Passage
Why do so many go through so much disruption in their middle years? Why then? Why do we consider it to be a crisis? The Middle Passage presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask: "Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played?" It is an occasion for redefining and reorienting the personality, a necessary rite of passage between the extended adolescence of the first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and mortality. The Middle Passage addresses the following issues: How did we acquire our original sense of self? What are the changes that herald the Middle Passage? How does one revision the sense of self? What is the relationship between Jung's concept of individuation and our commitment to others? What attitudes and behavior support individuation and help us move from misery to meaning? This book shows how we may travel the Middle Passage consciously, thereby rendering our lives more meaningful and the second half of life immeasurably richer. --back cover
Stats for nerds
4recommend
4mentions
4people
2018–2022years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I found a lot of value in The Middle Passage by James Hollis.
- I’d consider your history to be rather successful, and while I wouldn’t consider myself nearly as successful I do feel like I can relate on many levels.
What got me through the depression that ensues in what I think was also a “mid-life crisis” was the perspective offered by James Hollis in his book: “The Middle Passage: From misery to meaning in midlife”.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47849.The_Middle_Passage
These sorts of crises come along at various points in our lives apparently, when something new starts brewing within that finds itself at odds with the outer structures in our lives. Unfortunately we don’t have very good societal structures/processes to assist people through these difficult times, but I feel that an understanding of the underlying psychological dynamics within oneself that give rise to this conflict can ease the suffering induced by these times of transition.
And it is genuine suffering. Make no mistake. Part of you needs to die and be renewed. It’s also not something to numb or shy away from, but to work through. Just as building your life “before” was a project, or series of projects, so is this task of moving through this difficult time, riddled with paradoxes and contradictions.
- If you like Rilke, you'd also really like James Hollis' The Middle Passage (1993). As for as books from the past decade go David Brooks' The Road to Character was pretty good. His follow-up The Second Mountain would have been better if he didn't recycle so much from the previous work. Sam Harris' Waking Up was pretty eye opening as Harris is a very lucid thinker.
- I got interested in V.S. Naipaul after reading this essay-- well technically a book review of a Naipaul biography-- by Christopher Hitchens-- Cruel and Unusual [0]. It explains and summarizes Naipaul's literary significance as well as the fascinating fact that he acted very badly in his personal life. I read his Middle Passage travelogue after that after I read that and it did not disappoint as far as callousness goes. Although I wouldn't exactly say that it is what we should aspire to I did like it in its own way.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/cruel-a...
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