When I was an undergrad at North Texas I took a couple of classes from Bill Painter, a fine teacher. He amazed me one day by arguing that most of the psychoses identified by Freud were in a way created by him or, more precisely, by the combination of his peculiar genius and the contemporary culture of Vienna. He agreed that Freud’s patients had problems but argued that the society shaped both the problems and their responses. Freud, with unconscious creativity, looked for universals in those responses and thought he found some. .

Painter argued that Freud was wrong. While going crazy may be universal, how you go crazy is cultural, and the relationship between the two is not a simple one.

This came to mind while reading a Salon article by Rebecca Traister (membership probably required) on the Male Biological Clock and the sight of middle-aged men chasing independent women with a shopping list of questions in the quest for marriage and stability.

It’s a fun article—it would have made a great “Sex and the City” episode--and there’s probably some truth in it (which is why it would have made a great episode).

Where did these biological clocks come from? When did people begin to feel anxiety about the alarm ringing and (to use Mark Twain’s imagery) the candlestick going soft and the candleholder barren? At some level, these concerns arise in any society where a sufficient number of people live long enough to have them.

However, the metaphor itself could not exist before the ticking clock, that is before the pendulum and the mechanical watch. Did this “modern” concept of time lend some urgency to it? I suspect yes. Time flickers instant by instant when the clock /ticks/ out/ time. So a bit of poetry increased the anxiety-- though I am not sure when the metaphor was first used.

But in the last twenty years or so a combination of science and culture has increased consciousness of these limits in our society. In part that is because they no longer seem inevitable. Women have children later and later, via hormones and in vitro fertilization. Viagra and its competitors allow men fun, and depending upon the state of his partner, the two might even procreate the old fashioned way. Thus, those with the money and the desire can change the structures of their lives and others watch with envy.

Then there is the loss of the status of age. Age may bring a bit of wisdom, but it also brings befuddlement as nipple-ringed students rip music and stack a gazillion songs into a little box with no moving parts.

If the candle still lights, if a child may come of us, then we haven’t abdicated youth to the strange new young.

Oscar Chamberlain - 3/21/2005

Thanks for the response, particularly the point about delaying child bearing so late.

Iwas definitely in a "poetic mood" when I wrote both this and the preceeding post. I have attempted poetry and fiction, with questionable results. But I still have what might be considered that mode of thought, and through it, history and the world of fact looks different.

The world seems more the dream of Shakespeare or, a bit more scarily, Kafka or Borges. I think such approaches have validity in history, though I have not yet figured out how to do it except in posing them as questions, food for thought.

Jonathan Dresner - 3/19/2005

It wasn't until well after the spread of mechanical clocks that average life expectancies exceeded menopause by a significant margin. And even in societies where the demographic transition had taken place, it's not until the mid-late 20th century that there's a significant number of women delaying (as opposed to avoiding it altogether) childbearing into their 30s or 40s.

I think that's the answer, though your question has more poetry in it.

E. Simon - 3/18/2005

(the need to see these behaviors as divergent, that is).

I think what you've written here seems to take lifelong pair-bonding as a general assumption, but I'm not entirely sure that it's a universal one. Whether or not an urge for marriage has in this context become a cultural prompt with which to replace an urge for continued reproduction is an interesting thought.

Also, loneliness would seem context-dependent, and a modern innovation at that. Perhaps societies where people dwell in villages instead of towns, suburbs, cities etc. could provide a good comparitor.