Mental Aspects of AcxEIng 33 



often as adaptation or stress. This is the concept of regression. 

 It would be more correct to say the concepts, for behind this 

 word there are evidently several meaninf^s when it is applied 

 to ageing. The simplest is that originally given it by Ribot 

 when he introduced the term to denote the retention in 

 memory of the earliest perception and experiences, whereas 

 other memories are lost in the reverse order of their acquisi- 

 tion: this is based on crude, and on the whole erroneous, 

 observations, but is at any rate a defined and appropriate 

 use of the word. Another, commoner meaning refers to the 

 way in which, when a man is confronted with "harsh experi- 

 ences, difficult or impossible to adjust to, his personality 

 reverts or regresses to earlier levels of integration": it has the 

 disadvantage of itself resting upon some vague conceptions 

 and not indicating how the regressive process affects different 

 features of the personality nor how far back it pushes the 

 personality. A third meaning of the term, by no means open 

 to these objections, is perhaps open to others of a more 

 theoretical kind: I mean the psychoanalytical use of the term, 

 to denote the redirection of libidinal energy towards infantile 

 fantasies. This is illustrated by Karl Abraham's explanation 

 of why so many senescent people pay excessive attention 

 to their bowels: "the more the genital zone retires into the 

 background as a source of pleasure, the more many individuals 

 turn back to oral and anal erotism" as in infancy. Yet 

 another meaning of regression is that which Kurt Lewin gave 

 it; he regarded various sorts of disorganisation and reduction 

 of the field of activity as regressive, pointing out that the 

 patterns of behaviour observable in senility or imprisonment 

 "strongly indicate that the different aspects of regression are 

 to a certain degree independent of each other". The term has 

 yet other meanings in this context: Spielmeyer used it, for 

 instance, to describe the arterial changes in senile brains; 

 and of course in German psychiatry late middle life is called 

 the period of regression (Riickbildung). A word so confusingly 

 various in its meaning and application is suspect in psychology: 

 there are too many ambiguous words and concepts as it is. 



