This volume contains the proceedings of the second and third conferences on aging held by the Boston Society for Gerontologic Psychiatry. Included are a variety of reports dealing with those aspects of the psychologic problems of the aged which are relatively independent of histologic changes in the brain.
Virtually all the contributors note the continuity through the life cycle of psychic processes organized in very early childhood. Altered life circumstances evoke emotional and behavioral reactions which are largely predictable from the antecedent life history. This is true whether the individual is confronted with the physical infirmities of aging or environmental change in the form of retirement from work, the loss of loved ones, etc. Many of the adaptive problems of the aged person can be formulated in terms of how free he is from dependence on the immediate environment for sources of drive and motivation. To the extent that one