Rating: 
Summary: A powerful, insightful book
Review: I have dozens of books that I recommend to clients, and a few that I suggest to friends. There's only one I have given as a gift a half-dozen to a dozen times. This is it. Hollis is an insightful therapist with a hopeful AND realistic perspective on mid-life and the difficulties that can beset us as we realize that "this is it", that we're not preparing for adulthood anymore, that we are there and better make something of it. He is also a gifted writer who can take Jungian theory and bring it down to earth, explaining it clearly without oversimplifying. (I'm more of a hard-nosed research-based cognitive-behavioural type myself, and I still think the book is brilliant.) Best of all, he is a judicious self-editor. Too many self-help books have one idea that gets padded out to 300 pages. (In the process of writing one of my own, I came across dozens of bad examples.) Hollis is concise and clear. The text of the book is 117 pages, worth twice as much for being half as thick as he could have made it. My suggestion: Buy it, read it, apply it, and then go buy copies for your mid-life friends' birthdays. On a selfish note, it's great not to be stuck for 40th birthday present ideas any more.
Rating:
Summary: Priceless Wisdom
Review: I'm coming back to this book after having read it 4 years ago. It was an invaluable source for my personal growth then, and I suspect it is just what I need now as I enter a new phase of psychological growth. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is sincere about personal change. Although my years of studying Jungian psychology surely helped, I believe this book would be accessible to anyone. If you only buy one book on this topic, this is it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but a bit theroretical
Review: If you have studied Jungian physchology, I would bet this is a great book. There is definitely some good material and it helps to provide some insight into midlife issues. Unfortunately, it is a bit intellectual in nature. The pragmatist in me is looking for more direct guidance than this book provides. It also seems like the writer is trying to impress us with his vocabulary - which doesn't make the reading any easier.
Rating: 
Summary: Remember the pain is a symptom, and you must find the cause
Review: James Hollis had written a short but well thought out book on the midlife crisis. The term "mid-life crisis" would not be a term Hollis would use, because he sees the conflicts and disturbances that happen at mid-life as wonderful warnings that new directions are needed to achieve a meaningful life. He compares the depression, the loss of energy, the unexplained anger, the flare up of passion, as earthquake type pressures that give evidence of the rumblings below. He compares the magic thinking of children, to the heroic thinking of young adulthood, to the more realistic thinking of the second adulthood. It is during this second adulthood that we must recognize what behavior patterns we bring from our early family of origin and whether those patterns have become maladaptive rather than adapative. He asks us to be aware of emotional outbursts or unrealistic passions of any type that signal that an unresoved complex still directs us emotionally and may be blocking our growth. He asks us to be willing to go into the luminous darkness within to seek answers, after all, by midlife you should have seen enough of the world to know that answers rarely lie outside of ourselves. I enjoyed the poetry of Tennyson, Rilke, and Kazantzakis that he uses throughout the book. I especially liked the linkage to Tennyson's Ulysses, a poem that honors the fact that Ulysses' greatest adventures happen after mid-life. Hollis believes the greatest tragedy during the midlife crisis is to remain unconscious and never examine the illusions, concepts, complexes, and dark shadows within us. After all, as we reach mid-life, this is the last chance for a meaningful life. The meaningful life is a higher goal that the happy life for both Jung and Hollis. Hollis links his concepts to the ancient Greek dramatic concept of the tragic flaw. This flaw is usually unconscious and eventually brings the hero to ruin, at which point, his eyes are opened and he sees beyond the veil of illusion under which he has acted. Hollis would say that the meaningful midlife is one in which ego needs are met and the ego becomes a tool, not an ever hungry brat requiring constant feeding. The wise adult uses the ego to achive a meaningful life, but does not have to achieve fame and fortune to feed this bottomless belly. The complexes are identified when unexplained or unwarranted anger and passion occur. After all these are just sign posts of an inner strategy failing to operate as it did back in childhood. The shadow has been accepted so that one's faults are put in perspective and do not weigh one down day after day with guilt and flashbacks and recriminations. This gives us the strength to go into the final years where one by one we lose all those whom we have loved and eventually they will lose us. Jung asks "Are we related to something infinite or not?" and he defines life as a luminous spell between two dark mysteries. Coming through the mid-life crisis allows us to personally answer these thoughts and concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Remember the pain is a symptom, and you must find the cause
Review: James Hollis had written a short but well thought out book on the midlife crisis. The term "mid-life crisis" would not be a term Hollis would use, because he sees the conflicts and disturbances that happen at mid-life as wonderful warnings that new directions are needed to achieve a meaningful life. He compares the depression, the loss of energy, the unexplained anger, the flare up of passion, as earthquake type pressures that give evidence of the rumblings below. He compares the magic thinking of children, to the heroic thinking of young adulthood, to the more realistic thinking of the second adulthood. It is during this second adulthood that we must recognize what behavior patterns we bring from our early family of origin and whether those patterns have become maladaptive rather than adapative. He asks us to be aware of emotional outbursts or unrealistic passions of any type that signal that an unresoved complex still directs us emotionally and may be blocking our growth. He asks us to be willing to go into the luminous darkness within to seek answers, after all, by midlife you should have seen enough of the world to know that answers rarely lie outside of ourselves. I enjoyed the poetry of Tennyson, Rilke, and Kazantzakis that he uses throughout the book. I especially liked the linkage to Tennyson's Ulysses, a poem that honors the fact that Ulysses' greatest adventures happen after mid-life. Hollis believes the greatest tragedy during the midlife crisis is to remain unconscious and never examine the illusions, concepts, complexes, and dark shadows within us. After all, as we reach mid-life, this is the last chance for a meaningful life. The meaningful life is a higher goal that the happy life for both Jung and Hollis. Hollis links his concepts to the ancient Greek dramatic concept of the tragic flaw. This flaw is usually unconscious and eventually brings the hero to ruin, at which point, his eyes are opened and he sees beyond the veil of illusion under which he has acted. Hollis would say that the meaningful midlife is one in which ego needs are met and the ego becomes a tool, not an ever hungry brat requiring constant feeding. The wise adult uses the ego to achive a meaningful life, but does not have to achieve fame and fortune to feed this bottomless belly. The complexes are identified when unexplained or unwarranted anger and passion occur. After all these are just sign posts of an inner strategy failing to operate as it did back in childhood. The shadow has been accepted so that one's faults are put in perspective and do not weigh one down day after day with guilt and flashbacks and recriminations. This gives us the strength to go into the final years where one by one we lose all those whom we have loved and eventually they will lose us. Jung asks "Are we related to something infinite or not?" and he defines life as a luminous spell between two dark mysteries. Coming through the mid-life crisis allows us to personally answer these thoughts and concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Superb book on "midlife crisis"
Review: The best book I've read on the topic. Hollis renames (and recasts) the midlife crisis as "the middle passage" and shows it to be an important opportunity for those of us around 40 to take advantage of. An excellent explanation of why this occurs and why the fact that it occurs is a good thing. Slightly technical jargon, but quite accessible for a layperson. Highly, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Superb book on "midlife crisis"
Review: The best book I've read on the topic. Hollis renames (and recasts) the midlife crisis as "the middle passage" and shows it to be an important opportunity for those of us around 40 to take advantage of. An excellent explanation of why this occurs and why the fact that it occurs is a good thing. Slightly technical jargon, but quite accessible for a layperson. Highly, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Midlife Ain't for Sissies
Review: This is probably the best book on the middle passage I have read. It is well written. The author is obviously compassionate and deeply understands the passage of which he speaks. It has my highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to not be insane and bitter past 50, read this!
Review: This is the BEST book about getting safely to the other side of 50. If is NOT pop-psyche or New Age. It is solid Jungian psychology. It is written to and for an educated audience but is jargon free. His prose is very good. It is a short book and therefore one that actually can be read in a couple of sittings. It shows the process of how one develops survival mechanisms at an early age that become threadbare in adulthood, but are very hard to recognize and change without some honest reflection and hard work. But he makes an excellent case that failing to do the work leads to a deepening of the misery one often experiences at the onset of mid-life. Hollis tells the reader what must be done, and makes it seem exciting rather than painful.
Rating:
Summary: The Quest for Personal Meaning
Review: This short, superb book is one of the best works on midlife that I've ever read. Hollis is NOT offering simple answers or formulas; instead, he's making clear just how difficult but rewarding the Middle Passage (as he names it) can be. I especially appreciate his oft-repeated dictum that the goal of life isn't Happiness so much as it is Meaning. Isn't this perpetual struggle to find & grasp an elusive happiness precisely what gets so many of us tied up in knots? His insistence that we must be willing to go into our own dark places, that we must be willing to acknowledge & discard out illusions, is far better advice than most of the Self-Help industry offers ... and far more helpful. A book that provokes thought & reflection, this slim volume of inner treasure is highly recommended!
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