GEROTRANSCENDENCE - THE CONTEMPLATIVE DIMENSION OF AGING

Open-ended, qualitative interviews were conducted with 50 Swedish men and women, aged 52-97, in order to examine developmental changes in wo rldview and self-attitudes. Retrospective changes were reported by a n umber (but not all) of the respondents, reflecting an awareness of a m ore cosmic dimension of reality, and attitudes reflecting a less narci ssistic view of the self: Similarities, and differences between the th eory of Gerotranscendence, which has informed this research, min the t heory of disengagement, and the works of other personality theorists a re discussed, along with implications for understanding the subjective experience of aging.