Roberta Provenzano believed the study of psychology should ultimately bring more happiness to the world. A deep thinker, she focused particularly on aging. Her collected articles on the subject propose to show that the myths and stereotypes of deterioration and senility associated with old age are based on preconceived notions rather than fact. She shows that, in spite of some physical limitations, the elderly, who are now in greater proportion in our society than ever before, can participate actively and constructively in their communities. This collection, published in honor of Provenzano, addresses age-related topics with an expertise that seems more relevant as time passes. It explores myths and stereotypes imposed upon the elderly, biological aspects of aging, psychological aspects of aging, and sociological aspects of aging Relying on scientific studies, Provenzano highlights how older people come to terms with specific conditions of aging. Quoting the adage "You are as old as you feel," she infers that aging does not necessarily mean defeat and decline, but can instead be a rewarding experience of personal fulfillment and social contribution.
Roberta's Papers on the Psychology of Aging
By Roberta ProvenzanoiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Roberta Provenzano, PhD
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-0712-7 Contents
Foreword..................................................................................................................viiPart One..................................................................................................................11. Myths and Stereotypes Commonly Imposed upon the Elderly within Our Society—and Their Effects.....................32. Ageism and the Promotion of Ageism.....................................................................................83. Biological Theories of Aging...........................................................................................104. Intellectual Performance of the Elderly................................................................................145. Disengagement..........................................................................................................176. Changes in Personality.................................................................................................21Part Two..................................................................................................................257. Old Age and the Process of Aging.......................................................................................278. Biological Aspects of Aging............................................................................................299. Psychological Aspects of Aging.........................................................................................3110. Sociological Aspects of Aging.........................................................................................3211. Normal Aging..........................................................................................................3412. Self-concept..........................................................................................................3513. Integrity vs. Despair and Disgust....................................................................................3614. Intellectual Functioning..............................................................................................3715. Memory................................................................................................................3816. Life Satisfaction and Adjustment to Aging.............................................................................3917. Social Isolation, Disengagement, and Role Loss........................................................................4018. "Senility"............................................................................................................4219. Other Myths...........................................................................................................4320. Personal Experience vs. Public Expectation...........................................................................4421. Potential Role of the Media in Improving the Image of Older People....................................................45References................................................................................................................49Table 1...................................................................................................................53
Chapter One
Myths and Stereotypes Commonly Imposed upon the Elderly within Our Society—and Their Effects
The unfortunate position in which large numbers of elderly people find themselves is rationalized by a widely accepted view that has little scientific substantiation, maintaining that aging is synonymous with general deterioration and that the aged can contribute little if anything to our technologically advanced society.
To be sure, there are biological changes associated with normal aging, but they seldom mean that the elderly cannot deal efficiently and productively with life. Also, there are enormous individual differences in aging: some people become exceptionally disabled and require the services available to the handicapped, while many others live to a very old age in excellent physical, mental, and emotional condition. In many populations, a good deal of decline is statistically normal in the sense that it occurs frequently, but it is not developmentally normal.
Chronological age and biological age aren't necessarily one and the same, and the dominance of chronological aging is a myth. Older people are not necessarily unproductive and do tend to remain actively concerned about their personal and community relationships. In 1974, 30 percent of people over sixty-five were employed in America. Many others have become involved in community organizations and creative activities—the kind of work they had no time for while building a career and raising a family. Physiological decline in functions may not be fixed and inevitable, and there may be both behavioral and biological intervention strategies that may reverse some of the deleterious performance observed in old people. Drastic decline occurs only when development has been impaired by severe psychological, social, and biological circumstances, so normal aging and pathological aging should be differentiated. If conditions for development are reasonably favorable, old age can be an era of personal fulfillment and social contribution.
A study of a comparison (Harris 1977) between the problems attributed to most people over sixty-five by the public at large and the problems actually experienced personally by older people themselves indicated the extent to which the American public have an accurate or distorted view of what it is like to grow old.
In most cases, the discrepancy between actual experience and expectation is enormous. While serious problems of not enough money, fear of crime, poor health, loneliness, and inadequate medical care indeed exist among certain minorities of old people, they are by no means as all-pervasive as the public thinks. Neither should having a problem be confused with being a problem. Such generalizations and myths about the elderly as an economically and socially deprived group can do the old a disservice, for they confront older people with a society that sees them merely as a problem and not as part of the solution to any of society's problems. Such problems that the public perceives among the elderly can only generate a sense of guilt and pity among the young instead of a sense of appreciation toward the elderly.
A striking finding in Harris's study is the fact that age does not appear to influence significantly the way individuals tend to view themselves: the public sixty-five and over tends to see itself as somewhat more friendly and warm than those under sixty-five, and as wiser from experience. The public's view of themselves in both these areas tends to increase continually with age. The public sixty-five and over have a relatively high self-image in terms of being useful members of their community: 40 percent of them consider themselves personally to be "very useful members of their community," while 39 percent said "somewhat useful members," and 17 percent said "not useful members at all." The self-image in this area held by the public sixty-five and over is, in fact, more positive than that held by the public ages eighteen to sixty-four: while 40 percent of the older group considered themselves to be "very useful members of their community," only 29 percent of the younger group felt that way about themselves.
On the whole, the public sixty-five and over sees itself as being as bright and alert, as open-minded and adaptable, and as good at getting things done as the public eighteen to sixty-four. While the public at large may vastly underestimate the effectiveness, the open-mindedness, and the alertness of most people over sixty-five, the older public themselves have as much confidence in their own abilities as do the young and a whole lot more confidence in themselves than the public has in them.
The myth of rigidity or resistance to change is equally as suspect as all the others. The concept of rigidity is not a unitary one; a person can be rigid in one area of endeavor but not in another. Although Freud postulated that the defenses of the organism are solidly rigidified by adulthood and that there is no hope for change, several studies of both animal and human subjects—which had pointed to some difficulties in later life in maintaining flexible sets—disclosed that such difficulties disappeared or were reduced significantly when learning factors were controlled. It is true that adult character structure is remarkably stable, but ability to change depends more on previous and lifelong personality traits than on anything inherent in old age.
While the lifestyle or response patterns of the older person to his environments may appear to suggest rigidity to the casual observer, in reality they may prove to be the only way such individuals can continue to function in complex environments, namely in the case of measurable increasing decline in cognitive functioning, when there are increasing losses in visual and hearing stimuli that heretofore served to give appropriate signals to the individual as to how he might respond to his environment. In spite of these hardships, the elderly generally adapt well to increased demands, and many take on new directions through travel, learning new skills, or working in new environments.
Unquestionably, the most wide-sweeping myth in its implications is that of intellectual impairment in the elderly. Despite bodily changes related to aging, most of the older persons retain their cognitive functioning, and it has been demonstrated that intellectual decline is more related to illness and disease than to aging.
Nevertheless, portrayals of the aged persons as intellectually impaired persist and isolate them from social participation. Unable to contribute their talents, experience, and energies to society, they are stripped of the opportunities to pitch in and help solve the problems that affect our society as a whole. They begin to see themselves as passive objects manipulated by others, having lost their personal mastery and control over their environment. The loss of their sense of competence, usefulness, and involvement in the community at large is a devastating experience for the aged who attach a great importance to this role. This tends to arouse feelings of helplessness and loss of self-esteem, which in turn increase physiological stress, which seems to shock the aging organism and may well result in physical, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Some diseases such as cervical cancer, leukemia, and ulcerative colitis have been linked to feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, and isolation induced by self-defeating social practices that seem to want to ignore a large and useful human resource.
Chapter Two
Ageism and the Promotion of Ageism
Ageism is a systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old, coming from a productivity-minded society placing little value on the nonproducers and stemming, among other factors, from a disguised attempt to avoid the personal realities of human aging and death. Thus, out of fear of his own mortality, the individual uses a self-protective prejudice that makes old people its victims.
Age is the most significant determinant of the negative attitudes which the young harbor toward the old. Physical changes, including getting sick, slowing down, wearing out, and showing the visible signs of age, such as wrinkles and gray hair are not a pleasant sight for the young and instill in them a deep-seated fear of growing old. In turn, when scorned by the young, the old tend to believe the negative definition applied to them and become self-conscious. They may withdraw from social events and begin to reject their own identity and reinforce what they believe to be society's rejection of them. Exaggerations of the problems of old age might force the young to struggle to look and act "young," thus inhibiting maturity and preventing them from enjoying the natural and rewarding process of aging. They may cause fears of aging that inhibit normal, rational planning for their later years.
We live in a youth-oriented culture that prizes and rewards physical vigor and youthful beauty. In its paramount preoccupation with youth, science tries to find a magical solution for the prolongation of life through embryonic cell therapy or procaine and vitamin therapy, among others. Commercial films emphasize the appeal of youth, and mass advertising sells us cosmetics and other products designed to defer the signs of aging almost as if aging were a shameful disease. It ensures that certain popular but erroneous assumptions are perpetuated in the public mind. Among other media, television shares its responsibility in perpetuating the myth of old age through stereotypic characterizations.
This clearly indicates that an effort should be made to reinforce positive images of the elderly and combat negative ones through the media.
Although the public tends to cast the blame for old age far more on the body of the older man or woman than on society's treatment of its older citizens, it would seem that society—somewhat reluctant to provide adequate services and resources to assist the aged—plays a major role in aging people by rendering them useless and isolated. Thus the picture of the elderly belonging to an institution is filtered into the public consciousness and becomes accepted. Society places a general handicap in the way of smooth adjustment in the final years of life, even when physical factors are relatively favorable. Strongly competitive societies in which too much emphasis is given to an individual's worth in terms of productive work and achievement, and in which inactivity is somewhat suspect and leisure highly commercialized (and therefore expensive), are not congenial environments in which to grow old.
Chapter Three
Biological Theories of Aging
Shock (1974) claimed that longevity is determined by a program that resides in the genes of the animal species and ultimately in the information contained in the DNA molecules of the gene. According to this theory, which is called the genetic (cellular) error theory of aging, aging and death of the cell are the result of errors that may occur at any step in the sequence of information transfer from the DNA to a different appropriate location in the cell (on the ribosomes).
This transfer occurs by the assembly of RNA molecules at specific points on the DNA molecule, which then migrate to the ribosomes. It results in the formation of a protein (or enzyme) that is critical for the continued function of specific cells in the animal and that depends upon what part of the very large DNA molecule is decoded with the formation of an appropriate m-RNA. The protein is not an exact copy and therefore is unable to carry out its function properly. The error may be the incorporation of the wrong amino acid in the protein or a slight error in the normal sequence.
A number of limitations beset the error hypothesis; since there are many steps in the sequence of information source (DNA) and the final protein product, errors can conceivably occur at many points. Further methods will have to identify the nature of the error and the point at which it occurs. Also this theory seems to be based on a false premise because different species have different kinds of life spans, and life spans are not expandable but finite. Furthermore, the different aspects of growth and development of the organism and impact of its environment cannot be overlooked.
At the cellular level, non genetic theories of aging presume that with the passage of time, changes take place in molecules and structural elements of cells that impair their effectiveness. A non genetic theory called deprivation theory assumes that aging is due to inadequate delivery of essential nutrients and oxygen to the cells of the body and points to the increasing prevalence of atherosclerosis with advancing age and the well-known effects of vascular degeneration on cellular and tissue functions. The fact that all the cells in the area of a tissue affected by vascular disease die when the blood supply is shut off is, however, in sharp contrast to the chance distribution of cells that disappear from a tissue or organ with advancing age. Furthermore, there is no evidence for a systematic reduction in oxygen content of the blood with advancing age. Fasting blood glucose levels and amounts of other nutrients present in the blood do not fall with advancing age. Even in advanced old age, adequate supplies of oxygen and nutrients can be assumed to be available to cells and tissues of the body, except in pathological circumstances. The validity of this theory is extremely doubtful. Some experiments have shown that at least small molecules (glucose and oxygen) tend to pass through membranes more easily in tissues taken from senescent animals than those taken from the young. Senescence then could not be ascribed to cellular deprivation of essential materials.
The most tenable biological theory of aging in my view is Selye's stress adaptation theory. According to Selye, aging is the result of the accumulation over time of the effects of the stresses of living. Any stress that requires adaptation by the organism leaves a residuum of impairment from which the animal does not completely recover. These residuals, although they may be quite small with respect to specific events (such as those biologic reaction-products that block the machinery), accumulate over the life span so that ultimately the reserve capacities of the animal are exhausted.
The General Adaptation Syndrome consists of 3 stages:
1. The alarm reaction or awareness of the nonhomeostatic state: (release of ACTH from the pituitary); 2. The stage of resistance or increased production of ACTH and release of corticosteroids, causing the body to return to the homeostatic state; and 3. The stage of exhaustion (due to overwhelming stress) characterized by a depletion of "adaptation energy" and resulting ultimately in death.
The general stress reaction involves virtually every organ and every chemical and psychological constituent of the human body. Thus it affects the total animal and its interaction with its external environment. At the point of exhaustion appear psychophysiological symptoms that Selye terms "diseases of adaptation" such as: high blood pressure, heart attacks, peptic ulcers, migraine headaches, pains in the neck, some types of asthma, toxicomanias, alcoholism, and excessive obesity or leanness due to abnormal dietary patterns. An ever-increasing proportion of the human population dies from the so-called wear-and-tear diseases, diseases of civilization, or degenerative diseases, which are primarily due to stress. Among all the autopsies (well over a thousand) performed by Selye, he has never seen a person who died of old age: we invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body. Life, which holds our parts together, is only as strong as its weakest vital link. When this breaks—no matter which vital link it is—our parts can no longer be held together as a single living being.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Roberta's Papers on the Psychology of Agingby Roberta Provenzano Copyright © 2011 by Roberta Provenzano, PhD. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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