Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development
Author: George E Vaillant
What can you do to increase the likelihood of living a happy, healthy, fulfilling life into your sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond? For more than five decades Harvard Medical School has studied the basic elements of adult human development, analyzing the health and happiness of hundreds of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. In Aging Well, George E. Vaillant, M.D., the director of the study, draws on the data gathered and reveals for the first time why some people turn out to be more resilient than others. His surprising conclusion is that individual lifestyle choices play a greater role than genetics, wealth, race, or other factors in determining how happy people are in later life. With its step-by-step advice and its revelation of scientific secrets, this inspiring book can help you-whether you are thirty-five or sixty-five-ensure that your golden years are truly golden
Publishers Weekly
This groundbreaking sociological analysis is based on three research projects that followed over 800 people from their adolescence through old age. Subjects were drawn from the Harvard Grant study of white males, the Inner City study of non-delinquent males and the Terman Women study of gifted females, begun respectively in 1921, 1930 and 1911. In all three studies, subjects were interviewed at regular intervals over time, a design that prevented observations from being skewed by the distortions of memory and allowed for analyses that distinguished effect from cause. Vaillant (The Natural History of Alcoholism), a psychiatrist and professor at the Harvard Medical School, brings a nuanced point of view and an acceptance of the project's limitations. (Those followed were not randomly selected and were overwhelmingly Caucasian.) Nevertheless the author makes compelling use of his data, which is based on intensive contacts with a variety of subjects. Vaillant posits that successful physical and emotional aging is most dependent on a lack of tobacco and alcohol abuse by subjects, an adaptive coping style, maintaining healthy weight with some exercise, a sustained loving (in most cases, marital) relationship and years of education. This is good news since factors that cannot be altered, such as ancestral longevity, parental characteristics and childhood temperament, were among those ruled out as predictors. The book's academic tone will reassure some readers and put others off, but Vaillant's arresting interviews with selected subjects (recounted here) and his ability to learn from the subjects make this an outstanding contribution to the study of aging. National publicity. (Jan. 2) Copyright2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
A respected researcher, psychiatrist, professor at Harvard Medical School, and author of several books (e.g., The Natural History of Alcoholism), Vaillant uses individual life histories to illustrate how social and emotional development is an ongoing process. His work is based on Harvard's Study of Adult Development, which followed "824 individuals all selected as teenagers for different facets of mental and physical health more than half a century ago and studied for their entire lives." Participants answered biennial questionnaires and underwent physical examinations every five years. Vaillant points out that, while studies like this one are not representative, they do reveal how lifestyle choices can affect whether we reach a happy and healthy old age. He describes the developmental processes that make old age vital being ill without feeling sick, regaining the capacity of creativity and play, acquiring wisdom, and cultivating spirituality and offers suggestions for successful and happy aging. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/01.] Jodith Janes, Cleveland Clinic Fdn. Lib. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Table of Contents:
| 1 | The Study of Adult Development | 3 |
| 2 | Ripeness Is All: Social and Emotional Maturation | 39 |
| 3 | The Past and How Much It Matters | 83 |
| 4 | Generativity: A Key to Successful Aging | 113 |
| 5 | Keeper of the Meaning | 141 |
| 6 | Integrity: Death Be Not Proud | 159 |
| 7 | Healthy Aging: A Second Pass | 185 |
| 8 | Retirement, Play, and Creativity | 219 |
| 9 | Does Wisdom Increase with Age? | 249 |
| 10 | Spirituality, Religion, and Old Age | 257 |
| 11 | Do People Really Change Over Time? | 281 |
| 12 | Positive Aging: A Reprise | 307 |
| Appendices | ||
| A | The Three Cohorts | 327 |
| B | An Illustrated Glossary of Defenses | 334 |
| C | Methodology for Assessing Maturity of Adaptive Mental Mechanisms (a.k.a. Defenses) | 336 |
| D | Assessment of Childhood Scales | 338 |
| E | Basic Trust at Age 50 Associated with Childhood Environment and Future Successful Aging | 339 |
| F | Scale for Subjective Physical Health (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) | 340 |
| G | Scale for Objective Mental Health (Age 50-65) | 342 |
| H | Scale for Objective Social Supports (Age 50-70, Harvard Cohort Only) | 343 |
| I | Scale for Subjective Life Satisfaction | 344 |
| J | Table Contrasting the Happy-Well with the Sad-Sick and the Prematurely Dead | 345 |
| K | Graceful Aging Scale | 346 |
| Notes | 347 | |
| Acknowledgments | 359 | |
| Index | 361 |
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