Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old - Hardcover

Randall, William L.; McKim, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195306872 ISBN 13: 9780195306873

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Against the background of Socrates' insight that the unexamined life is not worth living, Reading Our Lives: The Poetics of Growing Old investigates the often overlooked inside dimensions of aging. Despite popular portrayals of mid- and later life as entailing inevitable decline, this book looks at aging as, potentially, a process of poiesis: a creative endeavor of fashioning meaning from the ever-accumulating texts - memories and reflections-that constitute our inner worlds. At its center is the conviction that although we are constantly reading our lives to some degree anyway, doing so in a mindful matter is critical to our development in the second half of life.
Drawing on research in numerous disciplines affected by the so-called narrative turn - including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the psychology of aging - authors Randall and McKim articulate a vision of aging that promises to accommodate such time-honored concepts as wisdom and spirituality: one that understands aging as a matter not merely of getting old but of consciously growing old.

About this title

About the Author:

William L. Randall, EdD, is Associate Professor of Gerontology at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Author of The Stories We Are and co-author, with Gary Kenyon, of Restorying Our Lives and Ordinary Wisdom, his ideas on narrative and human development have been published in such journals as Theory & Psychology, Narrative Inquiry, and the Journal of Aging Studies.
A. Elizabeth McKim, PhD, is Associate Professor of English, also at St. Thomas University. Her areas of interest include poetic and narrative theory, cognitive poetics, and applied literature. Her scholarship on literature and medicine and literature and aging has been published in Literature & Medicine and Narrative Inquiry.

Review:

"...the book is geared toward those interested in the psychology of aging...[yet] its explorations into the neural basis of memory, especially autobiographical memory, make it a resource for cognitive neuroscientists as well. The prose-like style (as opposed to scientific language) extends the audience to those interested in the aging processes. Recommended."--Choice

"...Reading Our Lives offers a philosophically grounded and neurobiologically sound perspective for examining late life. As such, it challenges the reader to bring this perspective to bear in understanding and helping the elderly patient."--The American Journal of Psychiatry

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0195306872
• ISBN 13: 9780195306873
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 327