Beyond Despair and Disengagement: A Transactional Model of Personality.

Most personality theories of the aging devote insufficient consideration to the social learning transpiring during the aging period and to the dynamics of the interaction between developmental and social forces. Erikson emphasized the formulation of a philosophical verdict on one's earlier experiences. Similarly, in Neugarten's version of the disengagement theory, primacy is given to developmental intrapsychic changes of middle age, with a secondary role reserved for the later social-factors affecting the elderly. According to the transactional model proposed here, the effects of the environment to which the elderly person is subject are the product of (1) the people and settings comprising that environment, and (2) the manner in which the individual (with his unique personality and cognitive make-up) acts upon and is acted upon by these people and settings. This dynamic interplay continues throughout the aging process. The model highlights the need for research in which present behavioral and environmental events assume as much importance as past ones. (Author)