"If we observe the aging of individuals, in the period after middle life, it seems to me that we can distinguish three ideal-typical outcomes. Some individuals bear within themselves some psychological sources of self-renewal; aging brings for them accretions of wisdom, with no loss of spontaneity and ability to enjoy life, and they are relatively independent of the culture’s strictures and penalties imposed on the aged. Other individuals, possibly the majority, bear within them no such resources but are the beneficiaries of a cultural preservative (derived from work, power, position, etc.) which sustains them although only so long as the cultural conditions remain stable and protective. A third group, protected neither from within nor from without, simply decay. In terms more fully delineated elsewhere, we may have autonomous, adjusted, and anomic reactions to aging."
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Lawyers from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from PhiladelphiaSociologists from the United States
Original Language: English
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“Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” p. 484
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Riesman
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David Riesman
1909 – 2002
US-amerikanischer Soziologe
19 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by David Riesman →
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