The frustration of the will to power and social sentiment as a factor in mental decline in the elderly. Prospects for prevention and psychotherapeutic recovery

Abstract

The problem of old age is not only a question of cerebrovascular pathology but above all concerns the relationship of the elderly with society which, in the bourgeois economy and also in any other bureaucratic-technological economy aimed solely at efficiency and profit, marginalizes them or, at best, uses them, assigning them fictitious tasks. A sociocultural recovery of the elderly has been attempted by universities for the elderly, such as the one established by the municipality of Rapallo in collaboration with the University Institute of Modern Languages in Milan. The discomfort of the elderly is not captured by questionnaires and items, which only highlight stereotypical and false images. Even free individual interviews, whether inspired by cognitive-behavioral or psychoanalytic models, are not valid tools, while loneliness and lack of power and role in society can be understood through an approach inspired by the Adlerian analytical model, using which all references to the past, family constellation, early memories, and lifestyle unmask the fictions at play in the present and, at the same time, with encouragement, allow for a useful framing of the personality