Wise Review by Frank Tallis – How to Turn a Midlife Crisis into a Hero’s Journey | Health, mind and body books

II’m proud of how mild my midlife crisis is. While that cliché includes buying a Porsche or a torrid affair with a colleague, I mainly fell back on the geeky preoccupations of my youth, like founding poetry clubs and playing niche racquet sports. However, on the cusp of turning 50, and having been beaten by my 11-year-old son at Scrabble, I’m thrilled to have found a book that addresses my young struggle: an elegant discourse of profound wisdom that I hope will characterize my remaining years.

First, the author, a clinical psychologist named Frank Tallis, diagnosed the problem. Following some of the arguments in Ernest Becker’s 1973 study The Denial of Death, he suggests that such crises are at least partly the result of the West’s reluctance to confront death. In Britain, we avoid open coffins, for example. When our relatives die, as my mother did two years ago, they die in the hospital, not at home. We can hardly bring ourselves to say “death,” preferring euphemisms like “departure.” In this age of Instagram, our lives are dominated by filters and distractions. Crisis strikes when reality cannot be contained any longer. We lose our parents. Then we notice, inevitably, that we are now at the front of the queue.

Next, the author provides comfort where it is needed. The transformative message of this short, thought-provoking book is that instead of viewing such a mental predicament as shameful, we can embrace it and even reframe it as heroic. As author Joseph Campbell has pointed out, the myth that is repeated across cultures sees the hero descend into the underworld. This literal and metaphorical low point turns out to be a pivotal moment that leads to the triumphs and resolutions of the second act. In Homer, I now realize that while visiting the land of the dead, Odysseus first learned that his mother had died. Likewise, the opening of Dante’s Inferno is: “In the middle of life’s journey, I found myself in a dark forest, unable to discover the path before me.”

A midlife crisis doesn’t seem so bad after knowing that Odysseus and Dante had it. And Carl Jung, for that matter. The Swiss psychologist had a nervous breakdown in his late 30s, then readily decided that such an ordeal was a necessary “descent into the underworld,” preceding the fertile plains of mature life, where we might find peace through wisdom.

So what exactly is wisdom? The structure of this book, which progresses chronologically through the standard stages of a midlife crisis and its aftermath (Act One: Denial, Act Two: Acceptance, etc.), suggests that an answer may finally be forthcoming. However, Thales ultimately avoids this, preferring to keep his opinions to himself. As Nietzsche noted: “No one can build you the bridge over which you alone must cross the river of life.” One rare foray into the personal is the author’s admission that, in his late teens, he was tricked into joining a religious cult (“It was the ’70s,” he explains apologetically), which led to a rift with his family and unfortunate financial donations, much to his father’s dismay.

As psychoanalyst and author Anthony Storr once noted, a surprising number of self-proclaimed messiahs found their vocation while in the grip of a midlife crisis. Although this is a psychological step best avoided, it is true that the search for meaning can save us. Some branches of treatment have been devoted to it, inspired by Viktor Frankl’s observation, during his time in Nazi camps, that the prisoners who survived the longest were those who clung to some meaning amidst the mindless slaughter.

What do I take away from Wise, apart from the lingering memory of its 200-plus pages? It’s too early to say. And perhaps live more in the company of death, as the Stoics advised, to make it less brutal. Maybe read some of the books mentioned here, such as Frankl and Becker’s. There is no doubt in re-reading this book, which I sincerely recommend.