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The many faces of human ageing: toward a psychological culture of old age1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Paul B. Baltes
Paul B. Baltes*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education, Berlin, Germany
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Paul B. Baltes, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education, Lentzeallee 94, D-1000 Berlin-W33, Germany.
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Synopsis

In an effort to distil major findings about the nature of human ageing, seven propositions are presented as a guiding frame of reference. This propositional framework is then used to specify some conditions for a positive culture of old age and to advance one possible model of good psychological ageing. This model focuses on the dynamic interplay between three processes: selection, optimization, and compensation. The model is universal in its basic features, but at the same time emphasizes individual variations in phenotypic manifestation.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , November 1991 , pp. 837 - 854
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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Footnotes

1

This paper was presented as the keynote lecture (Festvortrag) of the Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Sciences, in June 1989 at Wiesbaden, FRG (Max Planck Society Yearbook, 1989).

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