42 Aubrey Lewis 



timing of the task are under the ageing person's control. 

 Many studies have shown, however, that the steady process 

 of slowing in simple reactions and choice-reactions probably 

 begins in the late teens or early twenties. 



Personality and awareness of defect may be as important as 

 degree of defect. When an elderly man uses a rather different 

 method from that of a younger man to carry out a particular 

 task, because he can no longer command the capacities 

 requisite for the earlier method, he may not be aware that he 

 is doing so, or, much less often, his new method may be the 

 outcome of reflection and experiment. Personality factors 

 will affect his attitude to disabilities and his success in coping 

 with them. But on personality changes in the elderly we have 

 little systematic information. Most of it comes from cross- 

 sectional studies which cannot tell us whether a trait or con- 

 stellation of traits is prominent in the elderly only when the 

 same traits have been evident in them when they were young. 

 It is, for example, commonly held that elderly people become 

 more obstinate, more self-centred, more rigid and conservative 

 but the opposite qualities are also observed in many — undue 

 pliancy, gossiping curiosity, vacillation and uncritical accept- 

 ance: these seem less to be the characteristics of age than 

 underlined features of individual personality. At present 

 many of the characteristics of old age, as ordinarily under- 

 stood, are attributed to the interplay between the individual 

 and his social environment which moulds his personality as 

 it influences his activities and interests, but Kallmann's 

 reports of senescent one-egg twins who have lived their lives 

 far apart suggest that too much weight may be given to social 

 influences in determining personality changes in old age. 



Rorschach test results have been interpreted as showing 

 in the aged reduced responsiveness to emotional stimuli, 

 inability to use inner resources, difficulty in forming satis- 

 factory social relationships and lessened instinctual control; 

 but these findings are b}^ no means regularly encountered. 

 Daniel Schuster's old gentleman of one hundred and six 

 vividly illustrates this. He provided ''a rich and productive 



