Psychohistory Forum

Clio’s Psyche Call for Papers:
Psychoanalysis of Aging, Assisted Living, Health, Longevity, and Retirement

(Articles are to be 1,000 – 2,500 words including a brief abstract, keywords, & short biography of the author.)
Due Date: August 15, 2025, for the Fall 2025 issue

Dear Colleagues,

Aging can be a wonderful time of freedom from commuting, work, and difficult bosses, or a horror show of insufficient savings, loss of purpose, and seriously declining health.  Our lifespan has increased enormously, as pointed out by Andrew Scott in his The 100 Year Life (2016), so it is quite important that we use the skills we’ve accumulated, including those of psychoanalysis and psychology, to seriously confront this issue in a personalized, humanistic way that is characteristic of Clio’s Psyche.

I now have relatives and new members of the Psychohistory Forum, who are thriving in assisted living and carrying on with their lives, despite health problems.  This experience of living with the help of others, both outside and within the family, needs to be explored since it is becoming rather commonplace among our older members and relatives.  Health issues are enormously important, which I know as the caregiver to my beloved wife, Geri, who struggles with Parkinson’s, bad arthritis, and bone-on-bone knees.  Yet our lives need to be much more than simply trips to the doctors, hospitals, and urgent cares, since unless we fall prey to Alzheimer’s, dementia, or death, we have the insights, knowledge, and wisdom of a lifetime, which we can share with others.

Sharing by writing is empowering, in some cases, as a defense against not simply waiting for the next health crisis or death.  Years ago, when I heard that a male friend, neighbor, or relative retired, I wondered how long they would live because there was so often a correlation between a man’s retiring from work and his death (women incline to do better with retirement).  Now, with much better health care and greater longevity, lifespans are expanded.  This reminds me of my 100-year-old cousin who I’m worried about since his wife recently died.  In Clio, we look for personalized first-person accounts and case studies while avoiding technical jargon.

Some possible psychoanalytic/psychological topics to write about include:

  • The fantasies and realities of aging: Confronting the prospect of death (choosing to die?).
  • Age consciousness, quality of life, life extension, and creative aging.
  • Personality types in coping with the more limited function of aging.
  • The impact of smaller families and geographic dispersion on aging, death, and dying.
  • How has retirement enriched, possibly depleted, and changed your life?
  • The impact of age segregation in retirement communities.
  • Case studies of famous people confronting aging and the wisdom of centenarians.
  • The psychology of cross-cultural approaches to the psychology of aging.
  • Reponses to the aging and impending death of a parent, sibling, spouse, or close friend.
  • Finding purpose through intergenerational connections in the process of aging.
  • Changing self-image, body image, and identity in the process of aging.
  • Battling disease, mental and physical decline: the fear and reality of Alzheimer’s.
  • The humor of old age, death, and dying while facing fears, narcissistic blows, and loss.
  • The negatives of aging (dependency, depression, marginalization) or finding new meaning.
  • Case studies of hospice workers, therapists, and thanatologists.
  • Pioneers in the study of aging: the impact of longevity due to medical advances.
  • Reviews of scholarly books, movies, or television programs on aging, assisted living, health, longevity, and retirement.

We seek articles from 1,000-2,500 words—including your title, author name with affiliation, a 35-50-word abstract, 7-10 keywords, and your brief biography (3-4 sentences) ending in your email address.  Send documents in Microsoft Word (*docx or doc) format by May 15, 2025, to cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com or our website.  We’d also accept an outstanding 3,500-word symposium article provided we get it by April 15, 2025.  We urge you to share this Call for Papers with colleagues and lists.

It is the style of our scholarly journal to publish thought-provoking, clearly written articles usually based upon psychoanalytic/psychological insight and developed with examples from history, current events, and the human experience.  We are open to all psychological and psychohistorical approaches and prefer personalized articles without psychoanalytic/psychological terminology or jargon.  We have very few references and those overwhelmingly for direct quotes in our modified APA style.  We emphasize good literary style without referring to authorities except when essential.  Submissions the editors deem suitable are anonymously refereed in our double-blind system.  Once you have submitted your article, please do not make any further edits to the piece until we return it to you if necessary.

For those who are not familiar with our publication and its sponsor, Clio’s Psyche has just completed its 30th year of publication by the Psychohistory Forum, a 42-year-old organization of academics, therapists, and laypeople holding regular scholarly meetings virtually or in Manhattan.  For information on our publication and back issues over a year old, go to our website at cliospsyche.org/archives.  For more information on our style guidelines, go to cliospsyche.org/guidelines.  More information can be found on our other websites, psychohistoryforum.com and psychobiographyforum.com.  Write me (cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com) for information on how to join our group and read our print journal.

Sincerely yours,

Paul

Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, Historian, Research Psychoanalyst, Online Professor, Editor-in-Chief, Clio’s Psyche, Founder and Director of the Psychohistory Forum, and author The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors (Routledge, 2018)
E-mail: cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com

Inna

Inna Rozentsvit, MD, PhD, MBA, MSciEd, Associate Editor of Clio’s Psyche, and Associate Director of the Psychohistory Forum, Neurologist, Neurodiversity & Neurorehabilitation Specialist, Psychoanalyst, and Psychohistorian who may be contacted at innarozentsvit@gmail.com