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Introduction
This learning object introduces you to the importance of the life course approach of seeing later life as one phase of an entire course of life from birth to death shaped by earlier life stages and experiences. Meaning and identity are important to mental health in later life and require that we can connect past, present and future in our lives. A highly influential theory of the life course which embodies these themes is the psychosocial theory of Erik Erikson, which you will consider in Section 2.
The Life Course has been traditionally viewed as the patterned progression of individual experience through time (Clausen, 1986). 'Patterned progression' may, according to different theories, be biological, psychological, psychosexual or sociological. Unlike the life span which is the total number of years an individual lives, the life course represents the meaningful pattern of a life seen in the passage of time (Moody, 1998). Although the life course has often been seen as biologically, psychologically or sociologically determined, post-modern theorists see it as a fluid process in which the various stages or phases are more open-ended and without fixed or predictable outcomes. For example, they would point to how there is much greater variation in the ways in which individuals experience middle age or retirement in developed societies today than in the past.
A life course approach suggests that in order to understand and work effectively with older people we need to see them in the context of their past lives as a life story. We will consider this in Section 3. Finally in Section 4 you will have a chance to consider these approaches and look at practical applications.
We start by asking you to think about the life course itself.