Exploring the Experience of Ageing: an Overview

. This overview represented both psychological and sociological approaches to the study of the experience of ageing from four north western European nations. The psychological presentations emphasised the importance of developing reliable and valid assessment instruments of the way people integrate their various states of awareness. The use of sentence completion Stems provided one method. Integrated stories were a further important way in which persons represented their lives, and needed to be studied in terms appropriate to the story. The sociological studies considered both theory making and different uses of the term ‘;experience’ in the gerontological literature. The hypotheses of an ageless self underlying an ageing body were disputed from the findings of a large survey. The last presentation emphasised the concept of learning from experience, and the importance of precedence for gaining a sense of being ‘;experienced’.