Erik Erikson used the film character of Dr. Borg from Wild Strawberries to flesh out his life cycle conception of ego integrity versus despair in old age. The present application of Erikson is to three women: Augusta Turnley (fiction), Florida Scott-Maxwell, and Arie Carpenter-three distinctly different lifestyles and educational backgrounds. Both the dialectical struggle contained in Erikson's model of old age and the specific concepts of ego integrity, despair and wisdom are made concrete in this theoretical exploration.
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References
1.
BorensteinA., Chimes of Change and Hours: Views of Older Women in Twentieth-Century America, Associated University Presses, London and Toronto, 1983.
2.
ClaytonV., Erikson's Theory of Human Development as It Applies to the Aged: Wisdom as Contradictive Cognition, Human Development, 18:2, pp. 119–128, 1975.
3.
EriksonE. H., Aging, Death, and the Completion of Being, Van TasselD. (ed.), University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 29–67, 1976.
