Take Our Aging Quiz
How much do you know about growing older? Is it true that your heredity will determine how long you live? Is it false that your vocabulary will grow as you age? Test yourself on the basic facts and the latest research on aging.
Click on each link below to see the answer to the True-False question.
Older people who talk a lot about their younger years are retreating into the past.
False.
They’re probably experiencing a potentially healing resurgence of memories, part of a normal and perhaps universal process called “life review.” Psychiatrist Robert N. Butler coined the term in 1963. He observed that when people become aware that they have limited time left, either in old age or because of a crisis of some kind, they begin to recall the events of their lives. They think about whether they succeeded or failed, and what kind of person they became, focusing especially on unresolved conflicts.
Those who have painful memories may experience only glimpses of the past, and carry on their review more or less unconsciously, partly through their dreams. Some who look backward and see mostly failures may despair, and Butler cautioned that it’s better to share the life review process with someone else. For many, however, it leads to the resolution of old conflicts, to reconciliation with family and friends, and to a kind of personality integration as individuals come to accept their own mortality and achieve a degree of serenity and wisdom.
Today, therapists sometimes use life review to help patients, but beyond that, many individuals who become interested in it see it primarily as a way to leave a legacy, a record of their lives and what they learned from their experiences, for their children and grandchildren.
Butler, Robert N. “Butler Reviews Life Review.” American Society on Aging.
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