The Retirement Syndrome:: The Psychology of Letting Go

Manfred Kets de Vries

European Management Journal, 2003, vol. 21, issue 6, 707-716

Abstract: This article analyzes a problem that can be described as the retirement syndrome. In exploring the difficulties many leaders face in letting go at the end of a full career, it reviews a number of the barriers to exit: financial, social, and psychological. It looks at the physical and psychological effects of aging, in the context of retirement; examines the experience of nothingness that single-minded careerists often feel after retirement; describes the talion principle, a subliminal fear of reprisals; and discusses the 'edifice complex,' the wish to leave behind a legacy. The article concludes with suggestions as to how individuals and organizations can develop more effective and humane disengagement strategies.

Keywords: Retirement; Letting; go; Psychological; and; physiological; effects; of; aging; CEO; blues; Depression; Nothingness; Talion; principle; Edifice; complex; Power; Disengagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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