BOOK REVIEWS:
Another Country, Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders
The Force of Character and the Lasting Life
Dale Kay Lillak, LMFT (408) 260-9995
Another Country, Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders
In keeping with the topic for this months’ News-You-Can-Use, it seemed timely to review two books I recently read. Both books are about aging: Another Country, Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders, by Mary Pipher, Ph.D. and The Force of Character and the Lasting Life by James Hillman.
Mary Pipher, the author of the best-selling book Reviving Ophelia, is an internationally noted psychologist, author, and lecturer. The title of her book Another Country is a metaphor for how age creates differences between people just as being from a different geographic location creates differences between people. Dr. Pipher suggests that generational differences include language, values, wants, desires, needs, expectations, religion, marriage, divorce, child rearing, and so on. While adult children may be living in the same city as their parents and grandparents, the younger adults experience a very different place. These differences in experience are not just related to the physical change of a place over time due to growth or decline, but are also related to a change in perspective due to the difference in age. Furthermore, Dr. Pipher suggests that we need a language to bridge the gap between the generations. The book is meant to be a guide and a resource for adults with aging parents and grandparents.
Dr. Pipher interviewed hundreds of elders and families, and effectively wove vignettes about their lives throughout the book. She does not look at aging with sentimentality, but reveals the bitter along with the sweet of many people’s lives. The elders in this book are sometimes lonely, depressed, and isolated while many others are happy and productive.
Personally, I found this book quite readable and both entertaining and informative. I liked that Dr. Pipher was careful not to judge the values of our elders--values which kept couples married for as long as 50 years, sometimes unhappily so. In our current trend of quickly married and as quickly divorced, I appreciated an unbiased discussion of how our parents and grandparents may have lived
The Force of Character and the Lasting Life
James Hillman, Jungian analyst, psychologist, scholar, lecturer, and author of more than twenty books including The Soul’s Code, turns his attention to aging in this philosophic essay The Force of Character. Dr. Hillman’s thesis is fascinating. He postulates that the effects of old age, even the debilitating effects, have purposes and values organized by the psyche. In short, Hillman states, "Aging makes metaphors of biology."
The memory losses of the aging person for current events, leaves space and time for recollections of events long since passed. He suggests that a heart condition in later life brings an opportunity to remove blockages from constricted relationships.
Dr. Hillman returns to the concept of the elder as "ancestor." The ancestor contains society’s cultural memory and tradition, and is a model for the young. He suggests that "oldness" is an archetypal state of being which enhances and deepens the value of the people and things we treasure.
He reminds us that by disregarding old people who aren’t young-acting or young-looking, we are disregarding our link to our future.
In Dr. Hillman’s view is that going through the developmental stage of being old is necessary for the fulfillment of an individual’s character. That which was once potential, becomes in old age, confirmed. The stage of being old is required to bring our personalities or, as Dr. Hillman prefers, our characters into completion. He is quick to point out that who we are as youth we are more fully so in our oldness.
This is a philosophical and psychological discussion on old age. The book takes a while to make its point, but along the way he digresses in fine fashion. I liked reading this book. I personally enjoy reading the meandering thoughts of a brilliant mind, and Dr. Hillman is at the very least brilliant.
In comparing Another Country and The Force of Character, I find the books come from different perspectives. Dr. Pipher is a middle-aged woman writing about her future while Dr. Hillman is an old man writing about is present. Dr. Pipher discusses what she describes as "the young-old" and "the old-old," with these distinctions based on the old person’s vitality. Dr. Hillman would, if I understand rightly, view these two descriptions as the culmination character.
Reach Dale Kay Lillak, LMFT at
408-260-9995 or lillak@pacbell.net
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