Coping with Aging

Coping with Aging Richard S. Lazarus Bernice N. Lazarus OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Coping with Aging Z This page intentionally left blank Coping with Aging Z Richard S. Lazarus and Bernice N. Lazarus 1 2006 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright ᭧ 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lazarus, Richard S. Coping with aging / Richard S. Lazarus and Bernice N. Lazarus. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0 -19-517302-4 ISBN 0 -19 -517302-3 1. Older people. 2. Adjustment (Psychology) in old age. 3. Aging—Psychological aspects. I. Lazarus, Bernice N. II. Title. HQ1061.L39 2004 305.26 —dc22 2004009734 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To R.S.L., my knight on a white horse —B.N.L. This page intentionally left blank Foreword Z This book is historic. It represents the last publication of its senior author, Richard S. Lazarus, who died of one of the environmental hazards he spoke of in this book—a bathroom fall. It also marks the culmination of a remarkable career of creative contribution to behavioral science. I witnessed the conceptualization, gestation, and birth of this work. In a modern-day variant of Tuesdays with Morrie, Professor Lazarus and I would have an extended lunch every Tuesday, sharing braised Chinese fish—a dish he relished but to which his wife, Bernice, was allergic. During those unfor- gettable meetings, we would discuss intellectual issues, university politics, and, above all, our personal aspirations. Professor Lazarus was one of the giants of twentieth century psychology. He was a giant precisely because he did not fall victim to allegiance with preexisting theoretical movements. He stood for himself and his ideas. He studied emotion when emotion was (rather surprisingly) considered an unsuitable area of investigation for psychology. He argued for the impor- tance of cognition in emotion at a time when psychologists believed that what mattered was behavior and association of behavior with rewards and punishments. He studied the unconscious when it was considered a ridic- ulous assertion, beyond the realm of proof. He helped open the fields of stress and coping and health psychology, both of which are now considered critical subareas of behavioral science. And he added simple but convincing clarity to our understanding of the nature of emotion. In 1991, he was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution to Psychology Award by the American Psychological Association in recognition of his creativity and the courage of his convictions. But despite this and other awards, Professor Lazarus revealed a longing in our Tuesday meals—a longing that led to the writing of this book. He felt dissatisfied with his treatment of emotional development in his classic book Emotion and Adaptation (1991). He felt he had not done justice to the nature of emotion in the human infant and toddler, and he almost entirely left out treatment of emotion at the other end of the spectrum, in aging. He felt that both areas of development—early life and the end of life—held secrets about what the nature of emotion is, and both areas provide means of confirming or disconfirming what he had written to date about how emotions work. However, he did not draw on these areas for inspiration or self-criticism. Great and creative figures draw from their own experience the creative wellspring of new ideas and important concepts to share. Indeed, Fellini’s movie 8 1/2 deals with precisely this topic of self-experience as the source of creativity. For Professor Lazarus, early life was too distant in time to provide creative sources, but aging was upon him. He had fallen victim to many of the diseases and deteriorations he describes in this book, and he lived the emotional consequences of these changes every day. Thus was conceived the book on aging and emotion that you are about to read. I believe it is appropriate to review some of the revolutionary ideas about emotion that Professor Lazarus propounded, and that form the core of the thinking of this book. Let us start with the nature of emotion itself. Emotion has been considered ineffable, unfathomable, impossible to define. Indeed, a common starting point in psychological treatments of emotion is that “ev- eryone knows what an emotion is until they are asked to define it.” Not so for Professor Lazarus. With the clarity and cogency characteristic of the great mind, Professor Lazarus says convincingly and succinctly: Emotions reflect the fate of one’s motives. That is the first “commandment” (or more appropri- ately, the first principle) of emotion. For Professor Lazarus, the understanding of emotion begins with the identification of the goals that one wants to attain. Emotions can be goal-congruent, and thus positive (regardless of what the goal happens to be), or goal-incongruent and hence negative (what- ever the goal happens to be). From this principle follow corollaries that ex- plain the occurrence of all emotions. A second major principle of emotion for Professor Lazarus was the relational principle. This principle holds that it is not an event that produces an emotion (the way behaviorists and many others believe), nor is it the self that generates emotion (the way many contemporary scientists and pop psychologists propose). Rather, an emotion is created by how an event relates to one’s strivings. Consequently, there can be no single indicator of an emotion (such as a facial expression), nor can there be a single way of behaving characteristic of an emotion (such as aggression in anger). Virtually any event can produce a given emotion, depending on the relational and moti- vational context, and virtually any response or set of responses can be in the service of an emotion, depending upon what function that behavior is serv- ing in the adaptive life of the person. Consider, for instance, how doing nothing can constitute a potent manifestation of anger. In this book, Profes- viii foreword sor Lazarus makes clear that it is a mistake to think of any emotion as good or bad—it all will depend on context, on the operation of the relational principle. Professor Lazarus did not think much of “positive psychology” precisely because of its uncritical acceptance of some emotions as intrinsically good, and others as intrinsically bad. His views about emotions as relational are now rapidly becoming the standard view in the field—at last, Professor Lazarus would say. So far, this discussion has centered on the first author of the book. How- ever, Professor Lazarus’s wife, Bernice, represents a powerful force who helped shape his thinking throughout his life. Those Tuesday lunches drove home to me his acknowledgment of her contributions again and again. Ber- nice did so not only by making it possible for Richard to be free of care and concern to concentrate on his work, but also by providing an argumentative foil for his emerging ideas. It has been said that behind every successful man stands a woman. In this case, behind the intellectual success of Richard Laz- arus was a keen-thinking, witty, cheerful, enthusiastic, and intellectually in- sightful partner. For much of his career, Bernice played a silent role. In later years, Richard made sure that she received the credit long due her. His 1994 book Passion and Reason was but one of several of Richard’s later publications that justly shared authorship. Moreover, Richard insisted that at any confer- ence in which he was the invited speaker Bernice share the platform as an equal contributor to the power of his ideas. Bernice’s contributions to this book are especially noteworthy, because she, like Richard, not only has suf- fered many personal setbacks in health, but also has drawn on her personal experiences to inform her intellectual and creative contributions to what is said in the pages that follow. What a pair worthy of emulation. I feel sad in writing these words—sad in not having Professor Lazarus to discuss ideas on Tuesdays, sad in not being able to expect new insights from this remarkable husband-and-wife team who next month would have celebrated, remarkably in these days of divorce, their sixtieth wedding an- niversary. However, my sadness quickly dissipates once I consider the ad- mirable and enduring contribution Richard has made, and Bernice has made possible. Would that each of us would leave a comparable legacy for the rest of mankind. Joseph J. Campos, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California August 1, 2005 foreword ix This page intentionally left blank Preface Z We have already said to potential readers all we wanted to about our objec- tives in writing this book and our outlook on aging. Thus the only function of a preface is to express our thanks to those who have helped us in this venture.

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