Abstract

With the progress of the modem society，male midlife spiritual crisis is not only one of the psychological problems researched on Western societies, but also appears in real life frequently. The movie “American Beauty” is the most typical one which reflects this topic. A series of problems the male masters Lester faced with are the epitome of male midlife spiritual crisis. Then, what is male midlife spiritual crisis? What is the negative consequence of the crisis? What attitude should we choose to face the problem? Even though this problem has got attention by psychologists at home and abroad and have already made some achievements，general public do not pay enough attention to the problem.

In order to find out the method to male midlife spiritual crisis and prevent the occurrence of this problem, this article takes the movie “American Beauty” as the access point and chooses the research methods of content analysis and case analysis. Firstly, the article elaborates the concept of male midlife spiritual crisis. And then it analyzes what crisis the male masters faced with in the movie “American Beauty” and classify the crisis with integrating foreign and domestic cases. At last, it makes suggestions on the crisis.

In the article, the author wants to inform the content of male midlife spiritual crisis. At the same time, try to explore the causes, consequence and solutions of the crisis for the theoretical and practical study.

Key words: middle-aged men, spiritual crisis, psychology, movie, attitude

摘        要

随着社会的不断进步，中年男性精神危机不仅仅是西方社会研究的心理学问题之一，它已经越来越多的出现在现实生活中。反应这一题材影视作品也越来越多，电影《美国丽人》就是其中最典型的一部。男主人翁莱斯特所面临的一系列问题正是中年男性精神危机的缩影。究竟男性中年危机有哪些？这些危机会带来哪些严重的后果？我们又应该以怎么样的态度来对待这个问题？虽然这个问题越来越受到国内外心理学界的关注并取得了一些成果，但普通大众对这方面的重视程度还不够。
本文以电影《美国丽人》为切入点，以内容分析和案例分析为研究方法，力求找出处理中年男性精神危机的方法，以及如何预防这一问题的发生。本文首先阐述了中年男性精神危机的概念，然后分析电影《美国丽人》中主人翁所面临的危机并结合国内外案例将这些危机归类并分析原因，最后提出处理这一危机的建议。
本文不仅是为了了解中年男性精神危机的表现，并且希望探究这一危机产生的原因、造成的影响及解决的方式，在增强对这一现象的认知的同时为理论研究和现实案例提供参考。

关键词：中年男性，精神危机，心理学，电影，态度