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The Use of the Life Story Work for older people with and without cognitive impairment. Theoretical Basis of LSB Work Claudia K Y Lai, RN, PhD Associate Professor, School of Nursing The Hong Kong Polytechnic University President, Pi Iota Chapter
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The Use of the Life Story Work for older people with and without cognitive impairment Theoretical Basis of LSB Work Claudia K Y Lai, RN, PhD Associate Professor, School of Nursing The Hong Kong Polytechnic University President, Pi Iota Chapter Honor Society of Nursing Sigma Theta Tau International
Theoretical Frameworks for LSB Work • Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development • Butler’s life review • Life course perspective
Contribution (Bender et al., 1999) Less emphasis on instinctive drives, such as sexuality and aggression. Greater emphasis on the influence of society and culture on a person. The period of personality change is extend to the entire lifespan. Critique Burner (1990, cited in Rinnemark & Hagberg, 1997a) The strong focus placed upon the laws of nature and objective events across the life span. Developmental theories have difficulty in describing life histories in a way that enables predictions. Erikson’s Theory
Not Just One Task (Peck, 1956, cited in Peachey, 1992) • Specific Tasks of Old Age: • Ego-differentiation versus work-role preoccupation • Body transcendence versus body preoccupation • Ego-transcendence versus ego-preoccupation
Butler’s (1963) Life Review • Butler argued that older people, toward the end of their lives, undertook a life review. • His idea fit neatly into Erikson’s work. • Erikson pointed out the task. • Butler pointed to the method. (Bender et al., 1999)
Challenges to Butler’s Assumptions(Wallace, 1992) • Presumed relationship between chronological age and thought and talk about the past – Is psychological aging a well defined, naturally occurring process? • Alleged benefits for the elderly of reviewing the past
Reminiscence Work in the 80s(Bender et al., 1999) • When reminiscence groupwork came in in the 80s, workers would use the names of Erikson and Butler to give their work respectability. • Barbara Haight, an American Professor of Nursing, has been influential in separating life review from reminiscence. • Haight argued that while reminiscence is a communal, a sharing experience, life review is an individual process of examining one’s life in the presence of a therapist, therefore, each with different outcomes.
Life Span Development and the Life Course Perspective • Life span developmental psychology became generally accepted in the 1980s after systematic articulation during the 1970s. • The life span developmental approach has been defined as being “concerned with the description, explanation, and modification of developmental processes in the human life course from conception to death”(Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980, p. 66, cited in VandenBos, 1998).
Life Course Perspective(Matras, 1990) • From the point of view of the individual, the life course is his or her biography viewed in terms of socially prescribed activity, events, processes, and duration. • Age grading is the assignment of social roles to given chronological ages. • Most societies have at least 3 age-grade distinctions: children, adults, and elderly.
Life Course Domains(Matras, 1990) • Domains are social role spheres or spheres of activity, attachment, participation, or membership in which individuals can be observed, or can report themselves, at any moment in time. • At any moment in time an individual either is or is not a student, is or is not married, is or is not employed. • So that at such a moment the individual is or is not in the schooling domain, is or is not the married persons domain, is or is not in the employment domain. • When the individual enters a domain by making some change – becoming a student, getting married, finding a joy – he or she undergoes a transition in the life course.
References • Butler, R. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence. Psychiatry, 4, 1-18. • Erikson, E. H., (1978). Adulthood. New York: W. W. Norton. • Bender, M., Bauckham, P., & Norris, A. (1999). The therapeutic purposes of reminiscence. London, UK: Sage. • Rennemark, M. & Hagberg, B. (1997a). Sense of coherence among the elderly in relation to their perceived life history in an Eriksonian perspective. Aging and Mental Health, 1 (3), 221-229. • Wallace, J. B. (1992). Reconsidering the life review: the social construction of talk about the past. Gerontologist, 32 (1), 120-125. • Matras, J. (1990). Dependency, obligations, and entitlements: A new sociology of aging, the life course, and the elderly. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. • Peachey, N. H. (1992). Helping the elderly person resolve integrity versus despair. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 28 (2), 29-30.