Changing Images of Dependency in Prolongevity

Abstract

Images are ‘only’ images — mental constructs, mere abstractions. But they have concrete consequences. Our feelings and actions grow directly out of what we imagine to be true. Hence our images — though they may not initially conform to present reality — help shape ensuing reality. Today, our overriding image of the elderly is one of dependency. We expect them to be dependent, we perceive them as actually being dependent, and we behave toward them in accordance with this perception and this expectation. A number of authorities in the psychosocial aspects of aging — among them Robert N. Butler, Bernice Neugarten, Matilda Riley, and James E. Birren — have written of, and personally communicated to me, their conviction that many old people who would not otherwise fall into a state of dependency do so because all the signals we transmit to them, verbally and nonverbally, persuade them that they are not capable of being independent or nondependent (see, for example, [4], [7], pp. 1–21; [19], pp. 17–18, p. 29, p. 180, and [23]). As Sharon Curtin has put it ([20], p. 214), “The old are supposed to be a burden, not a resource.” Similar convictions have been expressed by previous speakers on this program. Even now, then, before we enter the age of prolongevity, the image of dependency — its descriptive accuracy, as well as the wisdom or the usefulness of clinging to it — needs reappraisal.