This screenplay is a fictional Coming of Age story of a young restless woman who, on an existentialist search for her inner self, investigates into the truth behind her famous grandmother's past, an anthropologist who conducted controversial research in the Samoa of the 1920s. In the turbulent streams of her consciousness, Kat drifts in between an urban reality in Berlin, daydreams about her grandmother's journey into the exotic unknown, fantasies about the enigmatic young Samoan single mom Penei, and memories of a once loving family. The encounter with Penei and the resulting friendship and frail romance of the two women proves to be an eye-opener for Kat who finally discovers that the objective truth proves to be the ultimate myth and that only the acknowledgement of her own, subjective vision will lead her on the path to her inner happiness. Although the character of Anna König is inspired by the historic figure of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the script has no intent to refer to actual facts of Mead's life. All the characters depicted are entirely fictional.

This screenplay is a fictional Coming of Age story of a young restless woman who, on an existentialist search for her inner self, investigates into the truth behind her famous grandmother's past, an anthropologist who conducted controversial research in the Samoa of the 1920s. In the turbulent streams of her consciousness, Kat drifts in between an urban reality in Berlin, daydreams about her grandmother's journey into the exotic unknown, fantasies about the enigmatic young Samoan single mom Penei, and memories of a once loving family. The encounter with Penei and the resulting friendship and frail romance of the two women proves to be an eye-opener for Kat who finally discovers that the objective truth proves to be the ultimate myth and that only the acknowledgement of her own, subjective vision will lead her on the path to her inner happiness. Although the character of Anna König is inspired by the historic figure of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the script has no intent to refer to actual facts of Mead's life. All the characters depicted are entirely fictional.

This thesis provides the first rigorous history of the concept of midlife crisis. It highlights the close connections between understandings of the life course and social change. It reverses accounts of popularization by showing how an idea moved from the public sphere into academia. Above all, it uncovers the feminist origins of the concept and places this in a historically little-studied tradition of writing about middle age that rejected the gendered "double standard of aging." Constructions of middle age and life-planning were not always oppressive, but often used for feminist purposes. The idea of midlife crisis became popular in the United States with journalist Gail Sheehy's Passages (1976), a critique of Erik Erikson's male-centered model of ego development and psychoanalytic constructions of gender and identity more generally. Drawing on mid-century notions of middle life as the time of a woman's entry into the public sphere, Sheehy's midlife crisis defined the onset of middle age, for men and women, as the end of traditional gender roles. As dual-earner families replaced the male breadwinner model, Passages circulated widely, read by women and men of different generations, including social scientists. Three psychoanalytic experts-Daniel Levinson, George Vaillant, and Roger Gould-rebutted Sheehy by putting forward a male-only concept of midlife as the end of a man's family obligations; they banned women from reimagining their lives. Though this became the dominant meaning of midlife crisis, it was not universally accepted. Feminist scholars, most famously the psychologist and ethicist Carol Gilligan, drew on women's experiences to challenge the midlife crisis, turning it into a sign of emotional instability, immaturity, and egotism. Resonating with widespread understandings of mental health and social responsibility, and confirmed by large-scale surveys in the late 1990s, this relegated the midlife crisis to a chauvinist cliché. It has remained a contested concept for negotiating the balances between work and life, production and reproduction into the present day.