ABSTRACT
Given the pervasive influence of dualism over perceptions of the relationship between body, self and society in western culture (Bendelow and Williams 1995; Camille 1994; Elliot 1991; Harré 1991; Shahar 1994), it is not surprising to detect two perspectives on human emotions, the subjective (inner) and the social (outer). On the subjective level emotions are conceptualized as an integral feature of the intensely personal structure of inner meaning and as such at the heart of each individual’s sense of self. Consciousness of ‘I’, as in the well-known observation ‘I don’t feel old’, is clearly a state of subjective awareness although it also has a point of reference-‘old’—in the world external to the private self. Emotions therefore always have a ‘referential content’ (Scarry 1985:5). A connection is established between subjective experience and the outside world, and the direction during the interplay between the inner and the outer worlds is signposted in terms of culturally prescribed images of the appropriate emotions associated with ageing and old age (Featherstone and Hepworth 1993; Hepworth 1993, 1995).
