Coping with a Paraphrenic World in Late Life

This study deals with late paraphrenia from a psychological coping perspective. Analyses of coping behavior in relation to paraphrenic delusions and hallucinations revealed rational choices of coping efforts and generally consistent emotional reactions to the subjectively perceived problem. The majority of the patients did not display evidence of premorbid abnormal personalities or life courses. The creation and sustainment of psychotic thoughts are discussed in relation to lack of correcting social feedback due to social isolation and weakened cognitive source monitoring. The implications of a psychological coping perspective for intervention are indicated.     

A Text of Identity: Frances Brooke and the Rhetoric of the Aging Spinster

Frances Brooke, writing in 1755 in London, England, selected the figure of the aging spinster as her alter ego when she wrote and edited a thirty-seven issue periodical, The Old Maid. Analysis of the periodical and the cultural environment in which Brooke wrote explains her choice of persona in terms of the issues she faced as a woman producing writing to be read largely by male contemporaries. This analysis reveals some of the underlying stereotypes of aging and identity in the period as well as the way these stereotypes could be used by a clever writer.     

The “Blurring” of the Lifecourse: Narrative, Memory and the Question of Authenticity

The view that aging provokes its own form of masquerade raises the question of what lies behind the mask and whether it is possible to outline what an authentic existence in later life might be like. Contemporary trends toward a narrative explanation of identity, exemplified by the growth of narrative therapies, may pose particular difficulties for theorising about aging. These therapies are associated with a submersion of the personal and social past under demands in the here and now and the de-contextualisation of old age from the lifecourse as it has been lived. Memory and lifecourse context are examined as possible foundations for authenticity and a model is suggested that contains postmodern preoccupations with multiple identity choices, the personal past and the possibilities for expression made available by particular social spaces or contexts.     

“A Tiger Behind, and Coming up Fast”: Governmentality and the Politics of Population Control in China

China has a growing superaging population, known colloquially as a tiger behind. This phenomenon has been traditionally analyzed by conventional social science methodology as a question of resource allocation to a burgeoning elderly population. However, population policies in China have emerged as key vehicles used to legitimize and position the identities that older people adopt. They contain specific yet continually changing technologies that function to mediate relations between older people and the Chinese state. They also represent an increase in state control that can be exerted on lifestyles in family form and older age and thus, the wider social meanings associated with that part of society and lifecourse. This article briefly summarizes the empirical detail and context of superaging in China, presenting an original theoretical analysis based on a reading of the work of Michel Foucault. The interrelationship between the Chinese government and older people is identified in terms of Foucault's (1978) and Rose and Miller's (1992) concept of governmentality. The article highlights how and why older people are the subjects of the Chinese state's gaze.     

The Sexuality of Elderly People on Film—Visual Limitations

During the last decade there has been a growing interest in images of aging in gerontology, but representations of elderly people's sexual lives still remain largely unexplored. This article attempts to elucidate the image of elderly people's sexuality in popular culture by analyzing representations of elderly people in mainstream feature films. Between 1990 and 1995, only 9 films out of a sample of 2000 in Swedish theatres cast elderly people as leading characters. In this article, these 9 films have been deconstructed in order to identify the rules of representation that guide and limit the depiction of elderly people's sexuality on film. One specific film is then analyzed in more detail to show how the rules were used to create a credible image of an elderly couple's sexuality, and a frame analysis is used to identify how elderly people's sexuality can be packaged on film to produce a slightly bolder representation of their sexuality.     

Towards the Postmodernization of Aging: The Body and Social Theory

This article reviews the significance of postmodernism as applied to understanding social gerontology. We begin by looking at the disciplinary dominance of biomedical models to understanding bodily change through later life. We then move our analysis to the lack of theoretical models within social gerontology which have not attempted to analyze or develop social explanations of the body. The article introduces the concept of postmodernism and reviews the work of major theorists who have impacted postmodern gerontology. We conclude by arguing for an interface between social theory and social gerontology by drawing on recent examples of the mask of aging thesis, biotechnologies, and new technologies that impact aging identity and understanding the self.     

The Loss of Aging Identity: Social Theory, Old Age, and the Power of Special Hospitals

Medical and health languages have emerged as master narratives used to police the identities that older offenders adopt in contemporary special hospitals such as Broadmoor, Rampton, and Ashworth, in the United Kingdom. Both contain continually changing technologies that function to mediate relations between older offenders and special hospitals. Medical and institutional discourses have been presented as reducing limitations associated with psychiatric disorders. This represents an increase in professional control that can be exerted on inmates' lifestyles in special hospitals which extends to the surveillance and governance of older persons in such secure settings. It is evident that the use of the indeterminate sentence, compulsory treatment prevents older offenders from rehabilitation. The process of treatment is to transform, discipline and normalize their behavior. In order to achieve normalization, coercive forms of treatment are invoked from informal social rules to the use and overuse of psychothropic drugs. Mentally disordered older offenders are placed under the gaze of perpetual surveillance but find ways of negotiating, resisting, and subverting that gaze. Furthermore, this article illuminates how the aging body and the use of time become other sources of punishment, which are pivotal to the structural organization of secure settings in the United Kingdom.     

Attentional control in the aging brain: insights from an fMRI study of the stroop task

Several recent studies of aging and cognition have attributed decreases in the efficiency of working memory processes to possible declines in attentional control, the mechanism(s) by which the brain attempts to limit its processing to that of task-relevant information. Here we used fMRI measures of neural activity during performance of the color-word Stroop task to compare the neural substrates of attentional control in younger (ages: 21-27 years old) and older participants (ages: 60-75 years old) during conditions of both increased competition (incongruent and congruent neutral) and increased conflict (incongruent and congruent neutral). We found evidence of age-related decreases in the responsiveness of structures thought to support attentional control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices), suggesting possible impairments in the implementation of attentional control in older participants. Consistent with this notion, older participants exhibited more extensive activation of ventral visual processing regions (i.e., temporal cortex) and anterior inferior prefrontal cortices, reflecting a decreased ability to inhibit the processing of task-irrelevant information. Also, the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in evaluatory processes at the level of response (e.g., detecting potential for error), showed age-related increases in its sensitivity to the presence of competing color information. These findings are discussed in terms of newly emerging models of attentional control in the human brain.