ABSTRACT
In memory of Ilse Warners (1930-1998), colleague and friend. To really understand (older) people, it is important to have insight
into how they actually perceive and value their lives. (Nies, 1989)
Old age psychology (psychogerontology) is about understanding behavioural changes as persons grow older. Psychogerontology is multidisciplinary in nature: first, because it focuses on changes within a diversity of (behavioural) aspects related to growing old; second, because all these aspects relating to later life, especially when people have reached (an advanced) old age, should increasingly be studied in relation to each other. Psychogerontology adopts its own methodology, with emphasis on longitudinal research. It also frequently offers significant knowledge to supplement the earlier, overexclusive, unidisciplinary approach adopted by medical science and psychiatry when dealing with those psychologically disturbed in old age. But that is not all. Psychogerontology implicitly ‘propagates’ the idea that ageing and old age have their own psychological nature without this having to become ‘problematic’. It is necessary to use the existing basic knowledge on ageing and old age when researching abnormal old age, whether clinical in nature or not, in order to be able to refute or correct current ways of thinking about dementia in the elderly. It is certainly true that psychogeriatrics as an area of work is now increasingly beginning to lose its exclusively ‘in persons with dementia’ character. The work of psychologists dealing with older persons with dementia is now no longer just confined to hospitals or homes.
