This study analyses the retirement process as a phenomenon of transition in the middle life investigating how one working woman, with a high professional qualification level, faces the proximity of the retirement and the reorientation of her life expectations. An interview and drawing-stories procedures as a technique of personality clinical investigation were used, making a qualitative data interpretation under the framework of Analytical Psychology. It concludes that, in this woman, the proximity of professional identity loss, concerned to retirement mobilizes symbols which are in the shadow but can be integrated to consciousness, as well as transformation archetypes, determining in this way the quality of facing of the middle age changes. It also concludes that the retirement process propitiates a personality redefinition and re-orientation on this middle life woman. Preparation programs for retirement should be implemented in order to emphasize the psychological aspects brought by this event, promoting conditions for the continuity of the individuation process.
Retirement; Woman; Midlife crisis; Analytical psychology