Various forms of infirmity can force us to stay at home and we might simply not have the energy to go out looking for new friends. Yet, they are of increasing importance. This is indeed a paradox that can be injurious to our physical and mental health. We do need hugs—but it goes even deeper.
Ego Integrity and Loss
Erik Erikson (Erikson, Erikson and Kivnick, 1986) proposed that the primary developmental challenge of later life is to find what he called “ego integrity” in the midst of a pull toward despair. I would suggest that part of the pull toward despair has to do with the loss of dear friends (as well as members of one’s own family). It is during the last years of life that we experience unwanted loss of people in our life rather than the freely chosen increase in relationships or purposeful dropping off of relationships. My own mother spoke often and emotionally of the loss of friends as she entered her late 80s and early 90s (along with the loss of husband in her mid-80s.
If our sense of self and even our sense of reality is informed (perhaps even established) in our interaction with other important people in our life, than the integrity of our ego is certainly challenged by the death of these important people. Left alone and facing our own death, we are facing a swirling, unanchored reality concerning who we “really” are after a long life of changing and sometimes contradictory selves and after living in a world that is now radically different (yet someone the same) as the world in which we were born.
On the more positive side, some would say that it is during the last years of our life that we are most likely to come to some deeper sense of our self. Carl Jung (1931a), like Erik Erikson believes that it is during these final years that we can achieve an integrated sense of self in which once blocked elements of our psyche come to the surface and intermix with long prevalent elements of our self. Jung writes about our masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) “spirits”—one of which usually remains under cover (Jung, 1978). They both can flourish during our late life. As a man I can become more “feminine” (more oriented toward relationships) and as a woman I become more independent (less beholding to other people) (Chodorow, 1999).
In later life, we can also let down our public mask (persona) and let those elements of our psyche that are less beholding to traditional expectations (shadow) come to the surface. Without the restricted version of reality found in relationships, we are allowed to view the unique convergencies of life—what Jung (1931b) called the synchronicities in our world. With this new sense of reality and with less public restraints imprisoning us, we can become more “eccentric.” Old age allows us to finally “dress in purple” and dance alone (Yong, Warrier and Bergquist, 2021).
This “freed” sense of self, of course, is reserved for those of us who find some economic freedom and later life and spend time in relatively good health. We are more likely to live in despair when we are poor and constantly face illness and a fragile body. We are dependent on other people to find food and shelter. Health care and social service workers become our most frequent companions. We forfeit any sense of self in order to remain alive. On Abraham Maslow’s (1970) hierarchy of need we return to the lowest level of survival when looking for relationships with other people. This, in turn, requires that we also return to Erikson’s first stage of development: we must trust the intentions and competencies of other people on whom we are beholding. Thus, as I have noted throughout this section, the nature of our friendships and our need for friendship change over time during our (hopefully) long life journey.
