James Hollis - Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up

Praise for Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

... nourishing.... Like a master chef, James Hollis knows that good food for the soul cannot be ordered to go.

The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

[O]ffers insight into the process of finding true meaning later in life.... challenging... earnest.

The Houston Chronicle

How to find your way out of the woods (figuratively)... Whats at stake is what Hollis calls the biggest project of midlife: reclaiming ones personal authority. This means leaving behind whats comfortable but confining.

More magazine

Everyone seems to be obsessing about the monetary cost of the graying of the American population, but theres very little talk about the soul. James Hollis, one of the foremost Jungian analytical psychologists in the world, has plenty to say about the soul.... [E]rudite and cultured but also accessible.

Portland Tribune

[A] deep Jungian exploration of individuation... humane and compassionate... [Holliss] focus on the underlying meaning of life will resonate for many.

Publishers Weekly

[C]ontains the writing of a gentle and insightful soul who does not bog down in analytical dryness, but speaks to and teaches from the heart... genuine vision and genuine humanity is a rare and valuable gift, and readers will find both in this work.

Clarissa Pinkola Ests, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves

[An] important book, which, as it strips away illusions, posits the soul-work thats necessary for the difficult task of making our lives meaningful.

Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

James Holliss new book is a work of soul-making. It brings solace and wisdom to those of us who find ourselves in a dark wood in the second half of life.

Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

Midlife is a time when people can lose their way and flounder. Jungian analyst James Hollis knows this terrain, describes it well and asks the important questions that can lead to clarity, maturity, and meaning.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., author of Goddesses in Everywoman and Gods in Everyman

KAYE MARVINS

James Hollis, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice and executive director of the C. G. Jung Educational Center of Houston, Texas. He received an A.B. from Manchester College and a Ph.D. from Drew University. He taught humanities for twenty-six years in various colleges and universities before becoming a Jungian analyst at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, where he received a diploma in analytical psychology. He lectures frequently throughout the country and worldwide, lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife, and has four grown children.

Finding
Meaning
in the
Second Half
of Life

JAMES HOLLIS, P H .D.

GOTHAM BOOKS

GOTHAM BOOKS

Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Previously published as a Gotham Books hardcover edition.

First trade paperback printing, May 2006

Copyright 2005 by James Hollis, Ph.D.

All rights reserved

GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT IS MADE FOR PERMISSION TO REPRINT THE FOLLOWING:

Quote from Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. English language translation 1929,1963 by Henry Holt & Co. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Co., LLC.

An excerpt from The Essential Rumi by Jeladaden Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. English translation by Coleman Barks. Reprinted by permission of Coleman Barks.

Excerpt, from After Making Love, from Loosestrife by Stephen Dunn. Copyright 1996 by Stephen Dunn. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this title as follows:

Hollis, James, 1940

Finding meaning in the second half of life / James Hollis.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-592-40120-1 (hardcover) ISBN 1-592-40207-0 (paperback)

1. Adulthood. 2. Maturation (Psychology) 3. Middle aged personsPsychology.
I. Title.

HQ1061.H56 2005

155.66dc22 2004060880

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

For Jill,

And for our children,
Taryn and Tim, Jonah and Seah,

And the people of
The Jung Center of Houston

Contents

And then the knowledge comes to me that I have space within me for a second, timeless, larger life.

R. M. Rilke,

I Love My Beings Dark Hours

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Thomas Wolfe,

Look Homeward, Angel

Your Life Is Addressing These Questions to You:

What has brought you to this place in your journey, this moment in your life?

What gods, what forces, what family, what social environment, has framed your reality, perhaps supported, perhaps constricted it?

Whose life have you been living?

Why, even when things are going well, do things feel not quite right?

Why does so much seem a disappointment, a betrayal, a bankruptcy of expectations?

Why do you believe that you have to hide so much, from others, from yourself?

Why does life seem a script written elsewhere, and you barely consulted, if at all?

Why have you come to this book, or why has it come to you, now?

Why does the idea of your soul trouble you, and feel familiar as a long-lost companion?

Why is the life you are living too small for the souls desire?

Why is now the time, if ever it is to happen, for you to answer the summons of the soul, the invitation to the second, larger life?

Introduction

The Dark Wood

S OMETIMES , TO OUR DISMAY , we find that we have been living someone elses life, that their values have and are directing our choices. While this life we are leading never quite feels right, it seems to be the only alternative. Even when we win the applause of others, we secretly feel fraudulent. Consider this true story: The man had spent his life in academia and brilliantly served the life of the mind. Now retired, he fell into a depression, for he had no structure to carry his psychological energies for him, no insistent agenda of values to serve, no sense of who he was apart from his role, his committees, his teaching task. One day, driving home after an hour of therapy, he began to weep, unaccountably weep, and no image or reason presented itself to his shaken consciousness. This man, who had lived quite successfully out of his head, confessed how humbling it was to be pulled so helplessly down into the body. That evening he dreamed that he was back in the university setting, that he was sitting for an exam for which he was unprepared, and that everyone else was far ahead of him on the test. The female instructor walked over to him and said, I am not going to let you fail this course. He recalled that as a child his mother was forever directing his energies, setting her goals as his goals, and frequently intervened for him with the same tone this instructor used. Powerless as all children are, he knew Mothers will had to be his, and so he lived out her ambitions for him. But in this dream, All of a sudden, it came to me that I didnt have to take this course. I thought, This test means nothing to me! I am beyond being tested in this way! Relief overwhelmed me. I tore up the blue book and walked out of the room. And into the beginning of a different lifehis life.