In the Ever After: Fairy Tales and the Second Half of Life

Dr. Chinen has written several books that address tales relating to different stages of life. He uses carefully chosen tales to demonstrate psychological theses in a helpful manner for modern people. This particular book addresses the latter half of life. It's simply a delight to read, highly informative and valuable psychologically and otherwise. It specifically addresses the problems of the aging populace which differ substantially from those of younger people. Its hypothesis models (in my view) a cyclical trend where one comes back to where one started - but with a qualitative difference. This resembles a helix wherein one appears (in two dimensions) that one is going around in circles, but in truth one has progressed in the third dimension. This is like the different ways to look at a push-pen's spring. You can look down the barrel, and it looks like a circle, but it isn't - because it's three dimensional. I've also read "Beyond the Hero" which addresses an earlier period in life, and "Once Upon a Midlife" which address the middle period of life. They form a wonderful trilogy. In this book, there are 16 short elder tales. Following each tale, Dr. Chinen presents a psychological analysis of the symbolism and deeper meanings buried in the tale. He also describes in a developmental way (from tale to tale - they are in a definite order in the book), the several psychological tasks challenging an elder. He differentiates between an elder and the elderly. The latter are merely old. The former are on the elder's quest towards fulfillment and wholeness. This parallels Carl Jung's individuation process. As in his other works, Dr. Chinen provides extensive footnotes for those wishing to pursue more academic studies of the subject - or just wishing to read more fairytales. There is a definite parallel between the symbols in these tales and those in dreams. As always, Dr. Chinen's presentation is beautifully done and the book wonderfully structured.