Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders - Hardcover

Pipher, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573221295 ISBN 13: 9781573221290

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 1999

Synopsis

An exploration by the best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia into the period of transition that marks the beginnings of old age offers a compassionate and wise view of ways to build communication between generations, presenting insights into empathy and understanding. 80,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

A clinical psychologist in private practice in Lincoln, Nebraska, Mary Pipher has been seeing families for over twenty years. She is also a visiting assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, and a commentator for Nebraska Public Radio. Dr. Pipher received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska in 1977. As an anthropology major in college, Dr. Pipher became aware of the impact of culture on the psychology of individuals. She wrote her previous book, Reviving Ophelia (Grosset/ Putnam, 1994), to help parents understand the situation young teenage girls are facing in our country today. Reviving Opheliaimmediately struck a chord, and Dr. Pipher began receiving speaking requests from all over the country.

Now, two years later, with Reviving Ophelia at #1 New York Times bestseller, remaining on the list for more than one year, Mary Pipher has become a national authority on family issues, speaking to groups of professional psychologists, educators, organizations of schools and college presidents across the country. Her articulate and energetic lectures create enthusiasm for her ideas in a way that unites rather than polarizes her audiences, and she has become dedicated to reaching the largest possible audience with her important message.

Dr. Pipher is also the author of Hunger Pains: The American Women's Tragic Quest for Thinness (1988). She writes short fiction which has won numerous awards including the Alice P. Carter Award and recognition in the National Feminist Writer's competition. In the words of Mary Pipher, "I love my life as a writer. Writing has been the great gift of my middle years. It's a tender mercy, a reason to wake up every morning."

A plainspoken woman who retains her simplicity, Mary Pipher has seen her daily life change, but she has not changed. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Reviews

Older men and women, as well as their children and grandchildren, will find this well-written and sensitive investigation of aging both enlightening and engrossing. Because the death of her mother was so traumatic, Pipher, a psychologist and the author of Reviving Ophelia, was motivated to study the aging process in order to promote meaningful connections between the generations and more cultural support for pursuing them. She provides a wealth of anecdotal information about the problems of growing older, drawing on interviews and her own therapeutic work with predominately middle-class white and black Midwestern Americans in their 70s, 80s and 90s, as well as their children. Pipher contends that a variety of cultural trends are responsible for there being so many isolated old people today: a movement away from communal to individualistic ideals; the generation gap between baby boomers and their aging parents; the lack of organized support for the care of the elderly. As she relates the stories of those she has met and counseled, Pipher describes strategies for dealing with illness, physical decline, the death of a husband or wife and the emotional problems that arise for both the elderly and their families. She emphasizes the importance of intergenerational contacts, the benefit of giving older people freedom to make their own choices and her resolute belief that families can fortify the honesty and love they share through involvement in a dying parent's final months. One of the strengths of this excellent study is that Pipher includes examples of troubled as well as rewarding marital and parent/child relationships. Agent, Susan Lee Cohen at Riverside Literary Agency. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Blazing a trail into the emotional life of people who are growing old, the author hacks away at much of the debrisstereotypes, indifference, and fearthat separates younger generations from their elders, but doesn't always escape the grip of sentimentality. As doctors, economists, and sociologists struggle to plan for a doubling of the population aged over 65 years (due in a little more than a generation), bestselling psychologist Pipher (who tackled families with The Shelter of Each Other, 1996, and adolescent girls with the Reviving Ophelia, 1994) leads a personal expedition into the land of the aging. Addressing the sandwich generation now dealing with both growing children and aging parents, Pipher warns, ``Our solutions to the dilemmas of caring for our elders will be applied to our own lives . . . the more we love and respect our elders, the more we teach our children to love and respect us.'' She deplores the segregation of the old in retirement communities or nursing homes as widening the already yawning gap between what she calls the self-reflective post-psychology generation and their community-oriented parents. (It should be noted that this is a shaky dichotomy; the parents of younger boomers came of age post-Freud, among nuclear, not extended, families.) Close relationships and frequent contact among all generationstoddlers, adolescents, parents, grandparents, even great-grandparentswill enrich everyone's lives and reduce the stress that comes from residues of guilt and anger, Pipher preaches. Although other researchers would disagree, she suggests thinking of the more vulnerable elderly ``as victims of chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder . . . ordinary healthy people for whom all hell has broken loose.'' Interviews, case histories, and personal anecdotes deepen the author's exploration of aging. Don't put the elderly on social ice floes is the plea here, accompanied by compassionate, if not always solidly grounded, insights into growing old that will benefit the elderly and their children alike. (First Serial to Time; Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Through case studies of patients and acquaintances, psychologist Pipher examines the trials of aging in contemporary America--for all those involved. These miniature biographies, told with respect and empathy, reveal not only a complicated reality but diverse possibilities as we all age.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573221295
• ISBN 13: 9781573221290
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328