The years from age 60 until death are considered late
adulthood. Erik Erikson termed this eight life stage “old age” characterized by
the developmental task of integrity versus despair. Integrity refers to the ability to integrate
or satisfactorily blend one’s history and experience with the task of
evaluating and accepting one’s life (Adams, Msw, Ph.D, 2013) . There are a number of theories of aging that
address how people change or do not change with advancing age, how late life
differs from earlier adulthood. Theories
that focus more on change than on continuity, which also happens to be the best
known and the oldest of these were activity theory and disengagement theory. Activity theory applies social role theory to
late life. The central assumption of
this theory is simply that older people experience greater subjective
well-being when they continue to be active in many roles. According to this theory, successful aging
depends on adaptation through substitution for roles that are no longer
available. Disengagement theory argues
that a process of mutual withdrawal between the individual and society occurs
in late adulthood. The theory was based on
Jung’s and Erikson’s observation that introspection seems to increase as we
age, as well as research that showed the decrease in social roles and social
contacts that accompanied aging. Even
though these two theories are no longer accepted wholesale- both have been
widely criticized. Activity theory may
have been overly simplistic whereas concerns about activity theory were fairly
benign, disengagement theory became very controversial, as it seemed to suggest
that society and practitioners should abandon older adults (Adams, Msw, Ph.D, 2013) .
Works Cited
Adams, Msw, Ph.D, K. B. (2013). Late Adulthood. In J.
B. Ashford, & C. W. LeCroy, Human Behavior in the Social Environment: A
Multdimensional Perspective (5th ed., p. 600). Belmont, California, United
States of America: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning. Retrieved 13 April, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment