Old Age Research

Abstract

Introduction The Myers Lecture for 1987 is reported in The Psychologist of Decelnber 1988, by Patrick Rabbitt, in which the conclusion is drawn that a which has nothing to say about what being old feels like, how elderly people see thell1selves in relation to the world, and how they attelnpt to understand their lives and to Inanage their interactions without elnbarrassnlent and pain will be a paltry, pseudo-acadenlic exercise (p. 506). It will, Rabbitt continues, Iniss entirely how elderly people's social interactions Inaintain the everyday efficiency of their cognitive processes. Research in social psychology, the neurosciences, and cognitive psychology had failed to provide such essential knowledge, and gerontology was in sore need of all three disciplines. I anl to propose that it needs none of the three, and that already, in 1950, an opportunity was Inissed to develop gerontology on lines so egregiously lacking in these and other disciplines since then. It was a proposal originally published in nliIneographed fornl in Harold E. Jones (Ed.), Research on Aging: Proceedings of a Conference held on August 710/ 1950/ at the University of California/ Berkeley (Pacific Coast Conlnlittee on Old Age Research, Social Science Research Council). It involved Q-Inethodology, and I was its author (Stephenson 1950). Background