ABSTRACT
Erik Erikson's stage, 'integrity', occurs in older age where a capacity for order and meaning is developed. It refers to coming to terms with different facets of oneself and one's life, and facing one's own mortality. The Polish culture is coming to terms with the past, including both positive and negative experiences, and understanding more about both forgetting and remembering. Warsaw is reborn as a vibrant European capital city. It has a commercial and financial centre with the modern skyscrapers common to all capital cities. There is still evidence in the suburbs of the tired communist blocks that provided cheap, but necessary, housing post-war. One of the themes concerned is emotional geography which, simply put, is about selecting particular places which are of personal significance effectively attachment to place. The family seems to have had strong attachments and to have the blend of both self-reliance and cooperation that marks out secure attachment style.
