Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders - Hardcover

Pipher, Mary Bray

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573221295 ISBN 13: 9781573221290

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 1999

Synopsis

An exploration by the best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia into the period of transition that marks the beginnings of old age offers a compassionate and wise view of ways to build communication between generations, presenting insights into empathy and understanding. 80,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

Review

Mary Pipher nimbly charts the psychological passage into old age, which May Sarton called "a foreign country".

Pipher reveals that the greatest shame for today's elders is not being self-sufficient. The majority of them stoically prefer to keep their feelings to themselves, and this is why it's so difficult to convince older parents to accept or even discuss such issues as physical and mental health, finances, eldercare, or living wills. This directly conflicts with the openness of their children, who grew up in the era of "free love" and were influenced by society (and the advent of psychology in the 1950s and popularisation of therapy) to talk frankly about emotions. While a boomer can easily talk with a friend about marriage difficulties or even surgery, an elder is likely to find admitting such "weaknesses" abhorrent.

Another Country includes excerpts of sessions with dozens of Pipher's psychology patients, interspersed with not-so-obvious advice for sensitively communicating with the elderly. Some interviews are grim: one woman hallucinated that rodents were running through her house; she was so desperate for company from her family, but too proud to ask them to stop by, that she invented her own visitors. But the breakthroughs in communication Pipher is able to accomplish, sometimes with the help of grandchildren as intermediaries, are startling and thoroughly encouraging. (For example, the animals the woman was imagining disappeared after she received company regularly.)

Pipher cared for her dying mother for a "horrid", guilt-filled year while this book was being written and says that she wanted "to help others in my situation feel less alone". She also aims to help each generation understand the other. In these goals she has succeeded brilliantly. Any adult struggling with issues with their parents, especially mortality, will findAnother Country an indispensable source of suggestions and support. --Erica Jorgensen

Review

"Totally accessible . . . [Another Country] is a compassionate . . . look at the disconnect between baby boomers and their aging parents or grandparents".

-- USA Today

"Well written and sensitive...a wealth of information about the problems of growing older."
-- Publisher's Weekly

"[Pipher] observes that to grow old for many people in today's fragmented, age-phobic, age-segregated America is to inhabit a foreign country, isolated, disconnected, and misunderstood."
--"The New York Times"

"Pipher explores how today's mobile, individualistic, media-drenched culture prevents so many dependent old people, and the relatives trying to do right by them, from getting what they need...Her insights will help people of several generations."
--"The Washington Post"

"Totally accessible...["Another Country"] is a compassionate...look at the disconnect between baby boomers and their aging parents or grandparents."
--"USA"" Today"

"A field guide to old age, combining personal stories with social theory."
--"The Boston Globe"

"Passionate and eloquent...There's a profound depth to this wise and moving book. Go read."
--"Lincoln"" Star-Journal "

"Rich in stories and full in details."
--"St. Louis"" Post-Dispatch"

"Older men and women, as well as their children and grandchildren, will find this well-written and a sensitive investigation of aging...Enlightening and engrossing."
--"Publishers Weekly"

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1573221295
• ISBN 13: 9781573221290
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328