Geriatric fun
First, he coined the term 'Social constructionism'. Then he made the world relational. Now, Professor Kenneth J. Gergen aims to debunk the myth of the sadness of growing old, and replace it with a positive view on aging.
By Camilla Mehlsen (cme@dpu.dk)
Countless wrinkles and visible veins all over. Tired and tawdry tufts of hair. Spotty memory and aching limbs. That is how old age is communicated in the media, when the elderly are portrayed, and how the smiling ladies in the cosmetics department describe the effects if we fail to purchase a particular facial crème. The terms 'Anti-aging' and 'anti-wrinkle' are often used on products aimed for men as well as women, and they work. The products sell because we do not want to grow old. We do not want to even look old. Old age is something we fear. But is it really that bad, getting old?
Aging's poor image is now under fire from several sides. One such agent is the cosmetics company Dove, which has recently launched a 'Pro-Age'-campaign to show that wrinkles are a natural part of our lives, and that women past the age of 55 can be both beautiful and full of life. In Dove's latest commercial, we see several naked women, many of them deeply wrinkled and with grey hair, and we are told that "This is not anti-age. It is pro-age." The ad sparked a heated debate, not least because it was banned on American TV due to the nudity, although this nudity differs radically from the highly manipulated (semi-)nudes we are used to seeing.
On the Dove website, visitors can discuss this advertising campaign, and - not surprisingly - women dominate the discussion. One woman, aged 25, writes about the Pro-Age ad under the username IdealIsSick: "I can't believe I never thought of "Anti-aging" formulas as being ANTI AGE!!! As in AGAINST THE PEOPLE WHO ARE AGING!!!!! I was under the spell that anti-aging products were trying to help us!!!! But help us do what!!!! ? HELLO! WE HAVE TO WAKE UP!"
From fear to joy
One who has woken up is the American psychologist and Professor Kenneth J. Gergen. For years now, he has tried to understand life in relation to social construction, and he is presently working to abolish the negative view of aging, and to show that getting older carries many benefits. Along with his wife, Professor Emeritus Mary Gergen, Professor Kenneth Gergen has launched the Positive Aging Newsletter, which is dedicated to praising aging, and which is published monthly with new - and usually positive - insights about aging.
"We aim to reconstruct the notion of aging," Kenneth J. Gergen says. "If you look at how age has been represented and interpreted in the West in the past one hundred years, the dominant impression is that of decay. This is because we are dealing with human development as a progression through various stages, and old age is the stage when decay sets in. Aging, therefore, is a deterioration. The way we construct age means that we go through life expecting something that we do not at all look forward to; we dread its coming. 'Oh no, I'm growing old. Oh no, my hair is turning grey.' But why live your life in fear of a period that most people experience as something positive? If aging is a construction, why not just re-construct it?"
According to Gergen, the fact that we think of aging as something negative is a construction. "There is nothing in, say, the physical changes, that require a negative interpretation. It is not negative in and of itself that the body grows frail," says Kenneth J. Gergen, and points out that in many non-Western cultures, age is something to look forward to. In certain Asian and African cultures, achieving old age gives you a high position in society, where you become respected and wise with age.
In the West, however, the negative view on aging is dominant. Why is this so? "Particularly in the industrialised countries, aging has become the negative period of decay. The reason is that when we focus on production, you are measured by your productivity. If your ability to produce declines, your surroundings lose their respect for you," says Kenneth J. Gergen.
Is death negative?
Mary and Kenneth J. Gergen oppose the traditional view of old age and argue a 'positive aging', but this has nothing to do with Positive Psychology. "Positive aging is not at all related to the Positive Psychology-movement, which emphasise individual change. When we talk about aging, it is not to generate happiness, but to construct a meaningful life. We try to construct aging in such a way that it adds meaning to life, so that it makes life worth living. Therefore it's not just about focusing on the positive," Kenneth J. Gergen says.
Social constructions are key words for Kenneth J. Gergen, who in 1985 gave rise to social constructionism. The core of this field is that it is not written in stone who and what we are. Identity is something we develop through social interaction with others, and therefore it is highly influenced by the culture and language we live in and through. This means that our understanding of the world is relational: Our descriptions and interpretation of the world is tied in with the social and cultural contexts and the relations we are part of. By extension, this also means that our interpretation of the aging human and of the ultimate decay, death, is relational.
Kenneth J. Gergen explains it this way: "I observe the relations we use to construct the individual. The source of meaning is the relations we are part of. Nothing is inherently negative or positive. Whatever happens to a person is negative or positive according to which approach you adopt, on how you construct it. Death is nothing negative in itself. Meaning depends on where you come from, and on how death is viewed in the cultural context. In a terrorist culture, you can set it up so that death is something to look forward to, quite the opposite of the way we look at death in the West. You don't have to view disease as something negative in itself. Actually the whole disease-concept is a construction in itself."
Illness often involves pain, and most people find that negative. How can pain be a construction? "Pain depends very much on the cultural significance we give it. If you look at boxing, or rugby, you will see the players dish out and receive a lot of pain, but they don't talk about it or experience it as pain. The question is, then, whether pain isn't something we can construct?"
The elderly wins on wisdom
If we are to re-construct old age as something to look forward to, rather than something we fear, we have to adopt a different way to benchmark the aging individual than intelligence, Kenneth J. Gergen explains.
"Older people often score low in tests such as reading speed, but a test of someone's intelligence doesn't show their accumulated wisdom. If we measure wisdom instead, the older you are, the higher you score. You simply know more when you grow old," says Kenneth J. Gergen.
"Measurement of wisdom does not focus on intelligence, but on several different aspects of what it means to be intelligent. One of these aspects is to be able to understand and balance a range of viewpoints. This means to be able to see a problem as more than just black or white or as something to be solved as quickly as possible, but it requires that you can understand and integrate multiple positions and viewpoints. That ability is based on wisdom. And the older you are, the more likely you are to possess that ability."
Another example where age wins out over youth is in the field of emotional stability. "People become emotionally stable as they grow older. This is a gain, rather than a loss," Kenneth J. Gergen says. A third example is philanthropy: It turns out that older people are more likely to assume responsibility and to heal the needy than young people, which can only be called a positive development.
The positive humdrum
On a day-to-day basis, there are many ways to turn something which is culturally determined to be negative into something positive. Buddhism uses meditation as a cure against grief and pain. "This isn't about avoiding the pain, but about facing it. Not about hiding from it, but about embracing it. When you fear something, you can turn the experience around if you welcome your fear," says Kenneth J. Gergen.
He applies a number of methods in his daily life to make his life more rich and meaningful. "We try to identify daily habits that can help us through life in a good way. There is a tendency, when old people meet, to talk a lot about their problems, about failing health and medicine. This alone creates decay. When we talk to one another, however, we try to only talk about problems for five minutes, and then switch to talking about what we look forward to, and about all the things that we do. We try to make that our reality instead of letting problems fill our lives. Not that you shouldn't talk openly about whatever problems you have, but you shouldn't focus only on the problems."
Another example from Gergen's own life is when the family assembles for dinner: The meal begins with everyone briefly explaining something positive from that day - and this leads to a positive feeling all around the table. A third example is a method to deal with bad experiences through positive thinking: "I used to loathe talking to a crowd when I was younger. But I overcame that by simply forgetting all about it - or so I thought," says Kenneth J. Gergen. "Then one day I had to stand up and talk to a very large crowd of people, and as I was watching people enter this sixteenth-century building, I simply panicked. It was like being 12 again. And then I thought back on all the times I had spoken and done all right. And when it was my turn to speak, I felt fine once more."
Kenneth J. Gergen explains that positive thoughts are constructive. "If I think about those who criticise my work when I write, I am unable to write anything. But if I think about those who will read what I write with pleasure, I can write freely. But I have to have the right audience present in my mind, or it becomes impossible. Once more: The important thing is how you construct the world so it becomes meaningful and worth living in."
About Kenneth J. GergenKenneth J. Gergen is Senior Research Professor at the Swarthmore College, USA. Along with his wife, Professor Emeritus Mary Gergen, he sits on the board of The Taos Institute, which operates in the cross-field between social construction and social practice. Together, the two also edit The Positive Aging Newsletter.
More about positive aging:
The taosinstitute
Positiveaging
Positivechange
The author:
Contact info for Camilla Mehlsen