Prejudices and stereotypes about old age

What is our view of older adults? Some facts about "viejismo".

"Old age exists when one begins to say: I have never felt so young."

-Jules Renard

"When I am told I am too old to do a thing, I try to do it right away."

-Pablo Picasso

"Death does not come with old age, but with oblivion."

-Gabriel García Márquez

What is the social imaginary of the elderly from the adult's point of view?

As a first step, I would like to reflect on how the vision of the elderly has evolved over time and how it has changed up to the present day. Nowadays, often there is a negative image of the elderly in western societies.There is a myth of "eternal youth" that we believe can hide the passage of time. Nowadays where it is very fashionable, surgeries and beauty treatments, in their extreme use, are some of the ways to cover the passage of time.

The changes in the body can be considered as a scenario of prejudice and the importance of the skin and being caressed as a means of communication and a way to prevent isolation.

Social factors

I consider as relevant data the increase in life expectancy which began to be detected in the second half of the 20th century and the decrease in the fertility rate. The proportion of people over 60 years of age is increasing faster than any other age group in almost all countries. As a result, we should focus on the positive aspects of this period, which is the simple fact of being alive. It is a challenge for society to value the role that older adults can play and to achieve maximum improvement in their quality of life and health, as well as their participation in society.

Old age, as explained in Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development, refers to a psychological struggle of the individual during this vital stage. In today's society, where advertising and image culture are highly relevant, youth is a rising value and, on the contrary, old age is hidden and denied, to the point that many people of a certain age live obsessed with the negative sensations linked to aging. This is known as Gerascophobia.

A culture that rejects old age

The culture rewards youth as symbols of joy, success and fertility, while it repudiates old age, associating it with illness, asexuality and the absence of desires or projects. In the collective imagination, phrases such as "let him be, he's old", "it's just old age", "he's like that because he's old", not to mention verbs such as "to rave" or "to go crazy", which are often associated with people of a certain age, are commonplace in the collective imagination.

Many professionals who deal with the elderly on a day-to-day basis feel that the elderly are not listened to, but silenced. Just the opposite of what an elderly person needs: to speak and be heard, to communicate with his or her environment and to feel that he or she is useful and valued. Is there something in the speech of the elderly that we do not want to hear? This is another of the questions we ask ourselves when approaching the subject.

Prejudices, stereotypes and misconceptions about old age

Taking as a reference the gerontopsychiatry Leopoldo Salvarezza and the North American psychiatrist Robert Neil Butler, I consider that old age and its social imaginary represent a new way of thinking:

• A discriminatory attitude and unfounded prejudices towards the elderly.

• The impossibility of placing oneself, in projection, as old.

• Ignorance of old age as a reality and as a vital stage.

• Confusing old age and illness.

• Confusing old age with senile dementia.

• Fanciful expectations and unproven treatments to stop the passage of time and try to achieve "eternal youth".

• Irrational biomedicalization of the aging process based on the medical paradigm.

• Participation of health professionals themselves, without gerontological training, in the criteria of old ageism.

• Collective unconscious of the society that is usually gerontophobic and thanatophobic.

We choose from desire

Psychoanalysis and its concept of desire gives us the possibility to "choose" the old man we want to be. We believe that neither happiness nor joy are attributes of the young, just as lack of desire is not characteristic of the young. nor the lack of desire is characteristic of the old.. These are prejudices that have been implanted for centuries and that lead the elderly to deny themselves when they feel desires, passions, emotions that are supposedly "no longer for their age".

For this reason we must be less critical of our own bodies and more critical of social prejudices about the elderly, so that we are not locked up in our own bodies.so that they do not leave us locked in a feeling of shame towards ourselves.