STRATEGIES FOR WELL-BEING IN LATER LIFE - A QUALITATIVE-ANALYSIS

A 70-year-old retired professional man, with some health problems but a high measured level of well-being, was interviewed for his perceptio n of the sources of well-being. A grounded-theory analysis showed that he related well-being most strongly to the freedom to choose activiti es, and manage his own time. Other well-being strategies within these domains were (i) reconstruing time, sc that physical slow-down was ass imilated to the positive values of leisure, patience and a steady pace of work, and (ii) social comparisons of self with others. Well-being in the context of age-related symptoms was achieved explicitly through tenacious self-monitoring and self-management of physical and cogniti ve effort, and implicitly through minimizing or distancing, of symptom s. The implicit strategies suggest a reorganization of subjectivity. T he Discussion addresses the problems of inferring implicit strategies, and psychological processes specific to the experience of ageing.