A Compass for Aging in Our Time - Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Later Life

This book offers a view of the elderly person in our contemporary society as a subject in an interpersonal-intersubjective psychoanalytic context. The contemporary elderly subject can no longer be viewed as an object in need of care and compassion. The experience of aging today requires orientating and treating the elderly as complex biological, social, and psychological subjects. This book is an updated psychoanalytic compass which captures the depth and complexity of the new aging process through the notion of mutual recognition to create an intersubjective experiential understanding. It illuminates various subjective aging experiences through a tapestry of texts, viewpoints, and dialogue with leading aging experts as multi-generational and multi-disciplinary representatives, who observe aging from within and without. Enriched with copious clinical material, as well as personal perspectives, this is a positive and compassionate guide to aging for all psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.