Successful Ageing, Spirituality and Meaning offers a multidisciplinary, international discussion of spiritual aspects of ageing. The book is based on papers produced for an expert meeting held in Holland, supplemented by additional chapters. Some of the chapters are therefore translated from the Dutch. The book contains a range of very valuable and interesting material. The chapters are arranged thematically and address the concepts of ageing, spirituality and meaning from gerontological, psychological, sociological, anthropological, moral and theological perspectives. Some of the chapters draw on empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, some are based on literature reviews, and others apply philosophical and theological approaches.
One of the strengths of the book is its international character. It draws on material from Holland, Scotland, Ghana, South Africa and elsewhere to illustrate the diversity of experience of older people within and between communities and nations. For example, the chapter ‘Shifting meanings of successful ageing, anthropological reflections’ describes anthropological research into the concepts of successful ageing in Ghana and The Netherlands. The Twi Ghanaian language has no word for ‘old’ that can be applied to human beings. The concept used is ‘having grown’. The authors state that to be ‘more grown’ than someone else implies having had more life experience, achieving wisdom and being more human, a conceptual context in which it seems natural to show respect to older people. This rather positive concept of ageing contrasts with that described in the next chapter where some older people in a South African study experienced abuse, neglect, oppression, domestic and other violence, and loneliness, some of which was related to structural violence rooted in the past (p. 154).
The book seeks explicitly to discuss a spiritual dimension of ageing and I found this to be one of its most problematic, but ultimately one of its most fruitful dimensions. The book was produced for the Titus Brandsma Institute, which is associated with Radboud University Nijmegen, a Catholic university, and the book's Judaeo-Christian bias was, at times, very evident, particularly in the earlier chapters. For example, Hein Blommestijn states that ‘the whole of our body is a revelation of the will of our Creator’ (p. 31), and makes other uncontested assertions that some readers will find very problematic.
In other places, however, theological concepts are explained and applied in a more self-conscious and creative way with very interesting results. To me, the most interesting chapter is ‘Forgetting who we are: theological reflections on successful ageing, personhood and dementia’ by John Swinton. Swinton uses his early professional experiences as a nurse caring for people with advanced dementia to develop a critique of concepts of personhood based on liberal presuppositions of the centrality of memory, reason, self-consciousness, autonomy and self-advocacy, which are ‘precisely the attributes which the condition of dementia takes away from the sufferer’ (p. 242). Swinton draws on Macmurray, who outlines an alternative view of personhood based on the human capacity for action and relationship. ‘For Macmurray … personhood emerges from relationship; community is the place from where individuality emerges. It is as “I” relate to “you” that I discover who I am and what it means to be human. I am because we are’ (p. 250). Swinton finds his ultimate grounding for this concept of personhood in the Christian doctrine of Trinity.
In summary, this is a valuable book offering some interesting insights into ageing and spirituality from anthropological, theological and other perspectives. It also engages with such states as frailty, dementia and dependency, providing material that teachers and students of undergraduate and postgraduate students of nursing, social work and applied studies in theology may find useful.
