It is obvious that instinctively the worker has deep inner resistance to withdrawal from work. The evidence accumulated by geriatricians ad psychiatrists amply indicates that retirement is frequently followed by crisis and severe emotional disturbance, sometimes even by death.
Why this resistance, why this inner conflict? Why the reluctance to accept benefits offered? Unfortunately, modern psychology has not given adequate attention to this question. Perhaps some suggestions of the answer can be found in a footnote in Sigmund Freud Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud writes:
When there is no special disposition in a man imperatively prescribing the direction of his life-interest, the ordinary work all can do for a livelihood can play the part which Voltaire wisely advocated it should do in our lives. It is not possible to discuss the significance of work for the economics of the libido adequately within the limits of a short survey. Laying stress upon importance of work has a greater effect than any other technique of living in the direction of binding the individual more closely to reality; in his work he is at least securely attached to a part of reality, the human community. Work is no less valuable for the opportunity it and the human relations connected with it provide for a very considerable discharge of libidinal component impulses, narcissistic, aggressive and even erotic, than because it is indispensable for subsistence and justifies existence in a society. . . . And yet, as a path to happiness, work is not valued very highly by men. They do not run after it as they do after other opportunities for gratification.
Let us first consider Freud's remark in the earlier part of this passage: "Laying stress upon the importance of work has a greater effect than any other technique of living in the direction of binding the individual more closely to reality; in his work, he is at least securely attached to a part of reality, to the human community." To the economist, work may be only a way of earning a living, but to Freud it is more, much more. It is also a way of life. For the average man, it is the bond with reality, the means of communal contact and participation. It serves to identify the individual with society, past, present, and future. It functions as a high form of sublimation, helping to make out of man a social, a civilized being. That is why forced retirement usually precipitates such a severe emotional crisis: it is nothing less than the rupture of the pattern that has hitherto given meaning and value to life.
With the rise of trade unionism, millions of workers have been able to achieve a wider sense of belonging than even their work has succeeded in conferring upon them. The union gives the worker added stature in the community. Through his union he asserts himself as a person. Through collective bargaining, he becomes a partner in industry. From time to time, he demonstrates his power by using his collective strength to improve his lot in life. As a union member, he becomes a major contributor to philanthropy at home and abroad. He exercises influence in his community. He becomes an important factor in politics. The newspapers note his actions and make him part of history. Forced retirement means isolation from the labor collectivity and a collapse into individual insignificance. No wonder it is felt to be so dreadful by most workers threatened with it.
It will be noted that in the passage I have cited, Freud observes that "as a path to happiness work is not valued very highly by men. They do not run after it as they do after other opportunities for gratification." This conclusion is of course based on European experiences and does not altogether represent the attitude towards work in our culture. I have, however, found a distinct difference in attitude towards work between the older and the young worker. In my own rather amateurish survey of the attitude of workers to forced retirement, I have found two quite contradictory reactions: older people want to continue working and shy away from retirement; but strangely enough it is the young to whom retirement appeals. Why this curious difference in attitude? I venture the following as a possible explanation. Every young person starts life with illusions about himself. He believes he can, and hopes he will, do something great. Usually, he does not admit to himself the illusory element in these dreams, but as he gets on in life, he necessarily adapts himself to reality and goes about earning his living as best he can. Yet he does not give up the hope of attaining his secret aims. Some day, he keeps telling himself, he will get the chance, and when anyone comes to him with a scheme by which he will some day be able to retire and do the things he has always wanted to do, he welcomes it. As he grows older, however, and begins to approach his retirement age, he begins to realize that what he hadn't been able to accomplish at 25 or 30, he is not likely to do at 65; and the very hope that once led him to look forward to it now makes the prospect of retirement quite distressing--because he knows that once he retires he will have to admit to himself that his great expectations were always largely illusory. Thus, the paradoxical attitude of the young man, if examined a little more closely, really confirms the analysis I have been trying to develop.
It is generally recognized that the happiest people are those fortunate few, who, through a combination of special faculties and inner drives, become the great creative artists, scientists, philosophers, and statesmen of their time. These men do not retire; their work is their life. They frequently live to a ripe old age and remain active to their very last breath. The great mass of people are not quite so fortunate. Most of them are forced to accept work not to their liking, but, even so, work becomes the bond between them and the community, between them and social reality. It constitutes their main social function and creates that sense of belonging without which life is hardly livable.
This is especially true of our American culture. Our entire educational and social pattern emphasizes a man's place in the working community. It is dinned into us from the start that we must be useful citizens, that we must do our share of the work, that we must make our contribution to society. The conventions of our civilization demand that a man either make money or earn money. He does not truly "belong" unless he is usefully employed, in the broad sense in which our civilization views usefulness. The playboy is looked upon with contempt because he is a stranger to man's normal activities. Yet the forced retirement idea is based on the conception that a man who has been taught all his life that he must be socially useful through work can make a sudden transition to idleness and still retain his self-respect. This notion is dangerously false. His very youthful hopes, as we have seen, now operate to intensify the fear of forced retirement. The realization that the things one had always dreamed of doing to establish oneself in the eyes of society are nothing but illusions tends suddenly to deflate one's self-esteem and to precipitate a serious emotional crisis.
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