ABSTRACT
The causes and functions of this division were first presented in a comprehensive manner in 1922 by Walter Lippmann, who drew attention to the limited possibility for a human being to come to know the increasingly complex, changeable, and vast environment that surrounds him/her. Since the cognitive content of that expanse is impossible for a person to comprehend, human beings must develop a simpler model of reality. In the face of the cognitive need to save oneself by simplifying the flow of information, to cut oneself off from various transmissions, such a process of social categorization occurs. The subject of the social, psychological, sociological, medical, and pedagogical situation of elderly persons has recently become a subject of great interest of researchers. A kind of transformation is occurring within the social consciousness in Poland: its content comprises a longing for eternal youth on the one hand, and a realization of the inevitability of our movement toward death on the other.
