The Third Age Identity Crisis - Truth or Dare

• Author: Bódi, D.C.
• Position: Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 121-126

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 5 (54) No. 2 - 2012

THE THIRD AGE IDENTITY CRISIS

- TRUTH OR DARE -

Diana-Cristina BÓDI1

Abstract: The growing interest contemporary society shows toward senior

citizens, especially from the demographic and socio-medical points of view,

has led to intense debate globally. This debate has materialized in ways of

raising awareness of, and rising sensitivity to the phenomenon, such as

declaring the year 2012 “The year of active aging and solidarity among

generations”. The present work focuses on an aspect that hasn’t been tackled

by literature very often, but which needs to be the subject of a complex

research: the senior citizens’ identity. Retirement, the dissolution of the

social network, the essential rearrangement of the “marriage nest” are the

causing factors of the change or loss of identity during the third age, which

can lead to the perception of senior citizens’ lives in a way that is totally

different from what is considered to be normal from a social point of view.

Key words: identity crisis, subjective wellbeing, roles of the elderly people.

1 Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University of Brasov.

1. Introduction

Research has brought out the common

issues that have become normal aspects of

senior citizens’ lives (medical, economic,

transport issues). However, senior citizens

are complex people who have other needs

and problems than the ones mentioned

above.

One of the problems refers to the funds of

the social insurances, both of health, and of

retirement, whose necessity is ever-

increasing. Another major problem within a

society with a high percentage of elderly

population is connected to the constitution

of the social and occupational frame for

elderly persons, so that these ones might

lead a civilized life. The researches in the

field reveal the fact that the elderly persons

and couples undergo a diminution of the

living standard, in the majority of cases [8].

To these a special social-psychological

situation is added, that we may difficultly

understand unless we experience it. This is

the professional unemployment, the

retirement from the work of the persons

who are still capable, available both

intellectually and culturally. Subjectively

driven in a process of recovery of the

structures of the personality and of the self

awareness through the dissolution of the

professional sub-identity, third age persons

are for society a source of experience,

intelligence, aptitudes, which, within

contemporary world, are totally neglected.

2. The third age identity crisis

The structure of the ego, the way a

person’s needs and impulses manifest

themselves in his or her relationship with

the environment, meets a new