Never Retire from a Fulfilling Life (article)

There are many different reasons why people retire, resulting in different dynamic considerations in understanding them. On the basis of my long experience as a psychiatrist I will outline some of these.

One is disability without any remaining abilities to participate in the original occupation. This is an unfortunate circumstance with which we can all sympathize and empathize. Another is disability with the remaining abilities to participate in some creative areas but not the original vocational venue. If the individual attempts to participate, we applaud that healthy, creative human element. If the individual does not attempt to participate in life, we will be observing the withdrawal from life and other symptoms of depression.

Premature or forced termination of employment often leaves people searching for ways to earn money. Where money is not an issue, and the

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individual does not search for ways to participate in some way that is interesting and valuable for them, we are observing clinical depression. Leaving one vocation to enter into another vocation may technically be retirement, but it is psychologically not true retirement. Leaving a vocation and participating in nothing creative is avoiding something. If their days are spent in recreational activities such as golf, they are living in a fantasy to avoid some experience with reality that is psychologically painful.

It is a significant psychological symptom when people choose to spend the majority of their adult lives in some vocational activity in which they have not been experiencing significant personal fulfillment, if it has not been due to monetary necessity. By contrast, if one’s vocational experience has been normally fulfilling, one will attempt to continue in that activity or something related to it. An example might be an elderly scientist, who needs to work less closely with instruments in a laboratory, which require the steady hand and clear eye of youth. That scientist then would attempt to do things in a field that utilizes his intellectual skills, such as teaching or supervising. Another example could be a farmer who loves that activity, but whose reduced physical strengths and abilities make it less practical to work as before. There are so many variations in the agricultural world that it would be easy to make a very long list of the various activities of interest and fulfillment for him.

In the field of medicine, it is well known that surgical specialists express more dissatisfaction with their interesting vocation and made earlier attempts at retirement, avoiding afterwards any participation in medical activities. Psychiatrists, especially psychoanalysts, have the least dissatisfaction with their practice, and when they do retire, they continue to participate in some aspect of their profession, such as psychohistory.

Listen to what the person who is retiring says. Do they want to “get away,” or do they want to do “something different?” Do they want to do something that is fulfilling, or play some “game?” Life should be fulfilling. When it isn’t, one should inquire. The search for the relief of this discomfort reasonably would be a search for the cause. When one’s vocational life isn’t fulfilling, life is experienced as uncomfortable or worse. When escape from this discomfort, rather than resolution to follow a greater interest, is the prime response, it is unfortunate and deserves our sympathy and maybe even some help. Numerous studies over a long period of time have established that rates of debility and death increase rapidly six months after retirement, without there being a causal connection found to any proceeding illness.

Understanding the preceding requires dealing with the concept of love. Loving oneself, the child within, and the child within other individuals is the essence of mental health. To the degree that one can have these loving experiences one will seek no retirement from life, only more fulfillment in living.

On a personal note, following the best medical advice, “physician heal thyself,” I will continue to avoid retiring. At age eighty-one, how long I will live is a question I am unable, or unwilling, to answer. But I promise never to retire from living a fulfilling life

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