Lighter as We Go: Virtues, Character Strengths, and Aging

ISBN-13: 9780199360956 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 312 str.

Mindy Greenstein

Opis

The fears of aging have been one long cascading domino effect through the years: twenty year-olds dread thirty; forty year-olds fear fifty; sixty fears seventy, and so it goes. And there is something to worry about, though it isn't what you'd expect: research shows that having a bad attitude toward aging when we're young is associated with poorer health when we're older. These worries tend to peak in midlife; but in Lighter as We Go, Mindy Greenstein and Jimmie Holland show us that, contrary to common wisdom, our sense of well-being actually increases with our age--often even in the presence of illness or disability. For the first time, Greenstein and Holland--on a joint venture between an 85 year-old and a fifty year-old--explore positive psychology concepts of character strengths and virtues to unveil how and why, through the course of a lifetime, we learn who we are as we go. Drawing from the authors' own personal, intergenerational friendship, as well as a broad array of research from many different areas--including social psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, humanities, psychiatry, and gerontology--Lighter as We Go introduces compassion, justice, community, and culture to help calm our cascading fears of aging.

Recenzje

Drs. Greenstein and Holland have a unique ability to draw the reader into this ongoing and enchanting review of aging writ wide and in the spirit of 'lighter as we go.' The book is truly uplifting and fun, not didactic or sterile, unlike anything I have read about successful aging. One cannot read this book dispassionately or in isolation, so prepare yourselves to join this symposium just as Cicero called his listeners to join him through his treatise On Old Age. And like any good conversation, Jimmie and Mindy leave us prepared and eager to continue our reflections and discussion far beyond the occasion of the book.

O autorze

Mindy Greenstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and author whose book The House on Crash Corner and Other Unavoidable Calamities (with a foreword by New York Times columnist David Brooks), was chosen as one of O: The Oprah Magazine's Books to Pick Up. She is co-developer of Meaning-Centered Group Psychotherapy, and a current research affiliate working with the geriatric psychiatry team at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, SELF, and elsewhere. Dr. Greenstein also blogs for Psychology Today. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. Dr. Jimmie Holland is known as the founder of the subspecialty psycho-oncology in cancer. Her work has been seminal in alerting oncologists to the psychosocial needs of patients and to the evidence-based interventions available today. The development of a body of literature, an international journal, textbooks and training curricula resulted in a science of psychosocial care. Dr. Holland made the information available in a book widely read by cancer patients, The Human Side of Cancer: Living with Hope, Coping with Uncertainty.